Living Box - Eugene Cheah + Celine Lim [58330]

[3CPO]

Living Box - Eugene Cheah + Celine Lim [58330]

Introduction to Project

The name of our project, Box in a Box in a Box (B3, for short) refers to our system of triadic nested components, one in another, and that interlocked pair yet again cradled within another unit. Broadly, B3 is a rectilinear unit with a single continuous dwelling space, flanked by exit/entry doors on each side of the unit, creating a through passage.

‘A house that has been experienced,’ according to Gaston Bachelard, ‘is not an inert box’; and in similar vein, ‘Inhabited space transcends geometrical space’. Our new typology of prefabricated living units can be summed up thus: where a living space and its attendant programme were once inseparable, we have now delineated a split between the two, destabilising the fixed relationship between programme and room. Instead of having rooms that contained and dictated human programmes, users of B3 configure a stack of pre-fabricated individual programme units, that are to be pulled out into the neutral, i.e. programme-less, singular, dwelling space in the housing unit. Hence, the relationship between dweller, space and its accompanying human activities constantly undergo change and redefinition – within the stable bounds of a sheltered space.

Fluidly rising and falling to the cadences of human activity patterns, the extension and retraction of the units as they are brought out to be used and stored away when not needed, are a temporary visual representation and profile of daily rituals, and dynamic programmatic changes. In parallel manner, pre-fabricated housing removes the geographic specificity of dwelling.

Divorcing space and programme from each other is a further development from Le Corbusier’s notion of housing as a machine for living, and Mies Van Der Rohe’s ideal of universal spaces. We make dwellers agents of their environments in the first instance – the prefabricated housing unit as a tool and facilitator for the dwellers’ activities – by giving them freedom from preset programmes. De Certeau’s analogy illustrates the compromise of living in a place one does not own, a compromise we avoid – ‘insinuates itself into the other's place, fragmentarily, without taking it over in its entirety …like a rented apartment. It transforms another person's property into a space borrowed for a moment by a transient. Renters make comparable changes in an apartment they furnish with their acts and memories.’ Via programmatic authority, users imprint their identity, presence, idiosyncrasies and ultimate ownership into the B3, achieving full realisation of house as a machine for living.











General Project Description and Specifications


Users of B3 pull out programme units to be used within the dwelling space. Individual Programme Containers host different housing programmes and users are able to tailor Programme Containers to their specifications. Each cabinet is accorded a singular programme, fabricated to the individual needs of the user if required.

With traditional housing typologies, adding rooms – altering programmes, in other words – to a housing unit can be a laboured process. Under traditional housing typologies, planning is fixed and human activity flex to accommodate itself within the confines of structured, predetermined programmes. Housing structured the activities of their inhabitants, and definite functions were attached to those confines. By eschewing traditional planning, and creating a prefabricated dwelling with no preconceived plan, together with a unique means of adding or changing programme cabinets as required, the unit is defined by its service to its inhabitant.

B3s are sturdy enough to live in for an extended amount of time, or permanently, its modular system enable users to edit its configuration post-construction. Users may accomplish this by replacing individual programme units with those of same width, or by appending additional living boxes onto the original B3.

Specifications

Prefabrication

Addresses two levels of prefabrication. Firstly, the individual programme modules contain custom-made interiors, and are assembled into a self-sufficient unit complete with programme, container and shell. Secondly, the nested units stack together and interlock to form a compact, transportable unit.

The dimensions of B3 are similar to intermodal container proportions, and are deployment ready via conventional methods such as ship, truck and plane without additional containing.

As a prefabricated dwelling with no preconceived plan, and a unique means of stacking programmes, it is indeed a place that is defined by its service to its user. While B3s are sturdy enough to live in for an extended amount of time, or permanently, its modular system enable users to edit its configuration post-construction. Users may accomplish this by replacing individual programme units with those of same width, or by appending additional units onto the original B3.

Skin

Windows, akin to a cellular mosaic, form an epidermal wall of graduated light and dark. Regulating the relationship between the interior of the dwelling and its exterior context, concertina timber louvres are B3’s interface to the world and control permissions for the degree of contact between the inside and out. An operable skin, different levels of light, screening, transparency, and privacy are enabled. The continuous, extended dwelling space is given delineation, spliced into slivers of variant light.

Optimal solar and environmental orientation is ensured with the uni-directional orientation of B3’s wall of windows; no part of the living unit is disadvantaged with regards to light and control over privacy and views of the external. In urban settings, units can be arranged back to back in order to create a high degree of privacy.

Programme Units

Layout of programme units follow the logic of the rituals of the day. The adjacencies of these units shape daily routine.

Programme Units are:

1. Powder Room
WC is fixed into the wall and does not move when the Powder Room Unit is pulled out.
2. Bath
3. Wardrobe
4. Bed
5. Kitchen
6. Dining
7. Bookcase
8. Living
9. Storage

Abraços