Wednesday, February 5, 2014

House as Thesis: Fog House in Imizamo Yethu











1 comment:

  1. LeeAnn
    I am sorry that I couldn't attend your presentation. Moreover, because I believe that the verbal portion in your presentation would be crucial for better understanding your design intent and the approach in solving the problem.
    I am deliberately not yet looking at your reflection/follow-up that you posted today - I'd like to take a shot and see if I understood correctly what your slides communicated to me, i.e. a "silent movie" experience.

    The first portion of this assignment was to develop an issue, a "research problem" as well as your own response to it, your thesis, or your stand. I believe that you tried to combine both in one paragraph on your 1st slide. However, I wish that both statements were a bit more precise so we can understand better what are you trying to do.
    I could understand the strategies, although I believe that they would be very difficult to achieve in such short time given to this project.

    Now, this part (slide 6) is where I would really need a verbal clarification from you. I was not very familiar with the climate in Cape Town, so I had to look it up. To my understanding they have a really mild and moderately wet winters and warm and dry summers. Humidity is on the higher side (they are close to oceans), but nothing really unpleasant as we have here in Toronto in the summer.

    So my question is: does the temperature ever falls so much (during nights?) so that there is actually a formation of fog and if there is a sufficient moisture so it can be captured to produce a reasonable amount of water?

    Also, Cape Town is located at 33.50 degrees S latitude, so it's winter sun will not be at such a low angle as you showed in your slide.
    It is unclear to me what is the platform on the roof and what purpose the structure / mesh has. Also, climbing up and down the ladder requires both hands and feet, so bringing something up/down (dishes?, food?, laundry?) would be extremely difficult.

    Finally, I do have a problem with the architectural expression of those cabins: they look really depressing. Yes, we need to provide affordable housing for the townships, but this is where architect can play a significant role: there are ways to include simple, yet effective strategies that will give even the affordable houses a bit more dignity and pleasantness.

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