UNIT-E / DWELLING WITH EMPATHY
PROJECT BASED ON ALEXANDRA ROAD ESTATE
The units take over the structure as a natural formation, just like a birdhouse.
What it’s like to observe the city from the top, climb to the roof like a cat, have a nest there like a bird, own the building as a human?
Experiencing a bird looking at the world from its nest and reinterpretation of the relationship between the sky and the nest. A man as a bird, a fox as a bird, a bird as a fox, a fox as a human…
It is designed with the urge of creating free units where all the components that create the environment can define their own functions. Fullness-emptiness relations, being surrounded by the units which offer different experiences to different users, becoming close to the sky by being involved to the building in various areas of the roof, starting with the blind facade. Practicing ergonomic analysis of units in various ways by considering different users, prevents possible occupations without causing hierarchy.
+ What project is that?
- I don’t really know.
A place you’d like to live in?
Or run through?
+ I would love to jump,
you know, jump from building
to building… Isn’t it amazing?
- You see the city.
+ What is it like?
- Better.
(Dialogue from the film ‘Breaking and Entering’)
The design aims for everyone to have equal access to the sky. For this reason, there are no façade passages that allow people on the upper floors to reach more easily. At the same time, it does not define the design used with strict limits. It is not designed on the basis of any user’s movements. This is a design consisting of spaces in which every living thing, even some inanimate objects (even light and wind), can free flow.
This design takes over the Alexandra Road Estate, as a natural formation (it can be thought of as a birdhouse or a beehive.) But we make this experience so interesting that the user actually feels what it’s like to look at the world from a birdhouse. S/he even understands the relationship between the birdhouse and the wall. Likewise, as a bird or fox makes free flow using the same environments as humans, the barriers to empathy are removed.
2020 FALL Semester // Common Module Project
Group Members: Can Cofus, Ecem Alkan, Gizem Sıla Sevim, Ayşe Betül Barışık.
