X House

Site Plan

It's funny how architects like to name their house designs with the alphabet.  I've encountered many such names in design publications, while I've done three myself--"L", "E", and now "X".  It's not difficult to see why.  The letters of the alphabet are easily identifiable shapes, and buildings, when seen from above, like those on Google Earth, tend to resemble blocks of various alphabets.  There is a certain pitfall, though, in naming your designs by some abstract shape--the shape itself can be a guiding concept for the design but it can also become a limiting or skewing factor, to the extent that one loses sight of the fact that one is designing a building for human dwelling, and not just to fit some preconceived abstract fancy or principle.

My X house is inspired by a house featured on the ArchDaily website which I saw in the spring.  I was intrigued by its shape, the way spaces flow from one to another, and the incorporation of an isolated tower rising out of the sprawling ranch style building.  It also recalls to me several of my favorite design principles from Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, too many to list here but especially in regards to the various forms of family dwellings, No. 75 to 79. 

I started the design in April and worked on it from time to time at a snail's pace, putting in details, fixing design issues, and trying to overcome the challenges thrown at me by the Revit software.  As is usually the case with me, my designs tend to run on the big side for simple dwellings.  This is something I hope to pare down in my future designs.

There are certain advantages in siting a house at an angle to the street, i.e., not strictly following the Cartesian coordinate system of the predominant street grid, if the width of the lot permits it.  For one thing, you can orient the entry and garage at an oblique angle to the street and thus gain more privacy.  Secondly it can open up rooms with more light and views.  

My design is composed of two bars which form an approximate "X" shape, anchored with a vertical volume at where they cross each other.  The X-shape is reflected inside through the unobstructed circulation routes, both ambulatorily and visually, at one side of each bar.  The effect is achieved by the use of (frosted) glazed pocket doors which separate the more private spaces--the guest bedroom and the office/music room in the E-W block, and the master bedroom in the N-S one--at the farther end of the bars from the more public areas.  The vertical volume contains the circulation hub and another office, an "Ivory Tower" for the most discriminating intellectual pursuits.

In addition, there are a couple of features which I'd like to point out - 

1. The generous use of wall-height sliding glass doors.  I use them on the south facing walls of the kitchen-dining area, the office, the guest room, and the master bedroom, which all open out to terraces, on the ground floor.  I also use them between the living room and kitchen/dining area to screen off the after-dinner mess, and in the office upstairs on two sides, which give access to the entire roof deck.

2. An exterior circular stair gives separate access to the roof deck, which provides ample space for an array of solar panels and for various entertaining options.

What follows are the plans, elevations, sections, and some renderings of the interior spaces, which are meant to give you some idea of what the design looks like.  Enjoy!

Ground Floor Plan

Second Floor Plan

Basement Floor Plan

NW Elevation

NE Elevation

SE Elevation

SW Elevation

NS Section facing East

NS Section facing West

Section through stairs

EW Section facing North

EW Section facing South

Entry Drive

Entry

West Perspective

South Perspective

NE Perspective

Vestibule

Living Room.1

Living Room.2

Kitchen-Dining

Her Office

Guest Bedroom

Master Bedroom

Master Bath

2nd Floor Landing

2nd Floor Kitchenette

His Office

Roof Deck

Laundry Room

Garage

Alltag

der Alltag eben
teenager edition

It seems to me that my life, since I stopped getting a regular paycheck (which coincided with the start of the recent recession and our moving to Bloomington), has been a series of experiments--a continual attempt at refining the art of Everyday Life, of finding the most productive ways to spend the time of my life.  Of course, you're probably saying to yourself, only a "lucky" few, with time on their hands, have the luxury to ponder questions like this.  The majority of people, instead, are so caught up in their daily grind that it may appear to them that even to raise this as a central question is an expression of unconscious arrogance. Well, maybe.  Or maybe it is just that it would be better if more people were in a position to raise it.  In any case, I will attempt to describe what everyday life means to me.

To begin with, the concept of life is bound up with the passage of time.  To help better visualize it, we humans conveniently carve it up into units of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and so on.  Our life is made up of repetitive daily routines, which we go through mostly on autopilot.  We spend a large chunk (about a third) of the 24-hour daily cycle in sleep, during which time we are mainly unconscious.  Another third we devote to making money in order to sustain our lifestyle in the society we live in.  The time we spend in this pursuit is usually not at our own command.  The last third we devote to various of life's maintenance tasks, such as shopping, cooking, eating, bathing, maintaining relationships, leisure activities, and so on.  Our daily routines are so well structured and deeply ingrained in us through habit that we can easily lose sight of the fact that it is our life that we are "spending", those hours and days, which never return.

The expression of "spending" time is curious, though I think rather apt.  (German, with its tendency for precision, has a different word for spending money, ausgeben, than for spending time, verbringen.)  We all have, as it were, a limited amount of the "stuff" deposited into our own metaphysical checking account on the day of our birth.  The amount in the bank has, alas, only one direction to go, down--and it is drawn down with each day's passing.  When the account is depleted, one ceases to be alive.  There is a website, called the Death Clock, which will project the date of your death given information you input, with a countdown clock displaying the number of seconds remaining--a friendly reminder, as the website says, that life is slipping away, second by second.  There is no more graphic a reminder of our impending death as being confronted by The Ticktock of the Death Clock. (The prediction provided is based on a very simple calculation and is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, so take it with a big pinch of salt.  All the same, we each have an accurate death clock, even if we don't know the date.)

As I am unemployed, my concern is with how to conduct myself during the approximate 8 hours of "work" time each day.  Again, German makes a distinction between "to work" (arbeiten) as at a job and "to occupy oneself with or to be engaged in something" (sich mit etwas beschäftigen).  What one occupies oneself with varies at different stages of one's life--prior to the first 2-3 decades, in acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate the life ahead, while in midlife, in establishing oneself in the societal structures one finds oneself in, or in bringing up the next generation as the case may be.  Then there comes a time when one begins to wonder whether there is anything else that one would like to do, apart from what one has been doing for the past 20-40 years, while there is still time.  For me, it is not about seeking novel experiences, which frequently populate people's so-called Bucket Lists, but about learning something new and acquiring new skills, not necessarily with the aim of returning to the work force, but instead expanding one's mind.  My choice about how to spend my time is to spend it in study.  There are always certain interests, which I'm pursuing, which engage my time and intellect and mildly challenge my dispositions and physical ability.  Thanks to Kirk, I've been able to pursue a studious life, relatively worry-free, these past four years.  This is not to say that things won't change in the future.  But until then I'll try to make the best of the time I have, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

„Arbeiten, um zu leben, und lebe nicht für die Arbeit.”