ARCH1201 - Project 1

ARTIFICE - House for Dr Bartholomeusz - Geoffrey Bawa
The house for Dr Bartholomeusz was originally designed as a private residence, but this project was cancelled by the client and Bawa turned it into his own office. It is located in Colombo, Sri Lanka and builted in 1961-63.

parti

structure
As this house is located in Sri Lanka, which is a tropical area, the house is very lightweight. Most part of the house is supported by thin walls and thin columns. The whole structure is quite simple. Some walls on the ground level is thicker and it shows that the walls are load-bearing.

program
The space enclosed by thick lines are the private space and these interconnected rooms are linked by the corridors.

geometry
This house is mainly formed by squares and rectangles. The small squares are connected and formed a bigger square and finally form a long rectangle. There are some triangles in the section, which are the roofs and verandahs.

enclosure
Most of the privated space is greatly enclosed by walls with small windows, while the open space is enclosed by the vegetations.Thus the feeling of staying inside and outside the rooms would be quite different.

circulation
The main circulation is quite a straight road and it may follow the form of the house, which is a long and thin rectangle. This circulation is fairly simple on the left hand side, and probably people would stay in the backyard on the right hand side. Thus the circulation becomes more interesting because of the vegetations at the sides.


poche

section

plan
These poche drawings show how the natural lighting cast on this house. Since the private space is greatly enclosed by the walls and most of the openings on the walls are quite small. These enclosed space has a big contrast with the open space, which is full of vegetations. I have added some colours on the trees in order to show the green ambiance of the courtyard.

model

The sectional model shows the longitudinal section as it can show more about the rooms. The roofs and ceilings can be taken off so that how the interconnected rooms and corridors link together can be explained easily.