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    housing studio

    joanna tan
    Oct 21, '10 3:13 AM EST


    housing studio

    Often times when someone outside the architecture realm finds out that you are studying architecture, the first thing that comes out of their mouth falls within the lines of "so... does that mean you are going to make houses someday?” At first glance, the idea of "making a house" seems like a simple idea. We've all live in a home of one form or another, so we all have an idea of what a simple home is comprised of. But ask anyone who has experienced the hardships of a housing studio and they can tell you right off the bat that it is not as simple as it seems. The intensity of the process that goes hand in hand with housing design has gone as far as job refusals in some firms and self-inflicted-hair-pulling/money-loss/lawsuits in others. It has taken us two years of designing everything-but-a-house to prepare for this studio and we’ve all been waiting to hone our space planning abilities to create these “dream homes”.

    Lucky for us architecture students in Southern California, we are within close proximity to many housing precedents.Some of these Los Angeles Homes include housing designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, and Rudolph Schindler. Last week, we had a chance to visit the Mackey Apartments, designed by Rudolph Schindler and renovated by my instructor this semester, Michael Ferguson.


     
    • 1 Comment

    • Milwaukee08

      I had to wait until my 5th and final studio before designing a single family home. It seems most professors I've had seem to poo-poo residential design in studios, with the attitude that odds are you'll be doing more commercial design after school, and if you do find yourself "stuck" in a residential firm, you won't get to design anything that great anyway, so why bother.

      You're lucky being out in California where you have many examples to study. Thankfully for me Frank Lloyd Wright was from Wisconsin so at least we have his Usonian designs to look at, otherwise 99.9% of the residential designs here are standard, boring, "I went to Home Depot and got a house" sort of things.

      Oh, and Joanna, try to throw some solar panels on that bad boy, America needs more sustainable residential energy! :)

      Oct 25, 10 6:44 pm  · 
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