Project Page | portfoilo

Green Dwelling.

The project focuses on not only the importance of the ways of planning apartments as well as considering lighting and colour schemes but also using a variety of materials as well as focusing on the ways of creating programs and experiences for both residents and other living organisms. The idea is to create harmony and balance between our environment and human beings as well as other entities with this narrow and restricted space.

The main ideas are "How can we, in relation to spatial design practices, investigate interesting and appropriate ways of planning narrow and restricted spaces? How can we make better use of the spaces and make them rich? What is the life of program in space and how it communicate with the space?”

First of all, why do we need an apartment in such a narrow and restricted space? In these days, Auckland is one of the cities which has really fast development and growth so that it is increasingly getting more crowded. Thanks to that, in our opinion, ‘Housing and Land use’ is one of the biggest urban issue in Auckland. Auckland, in reality, is having a difficulty with accommodating and adapting to sudden overpopulation. Due to these kind of urban issues, it is really helpful and critical decision to build an apartment through using narrow and restricted or even leftover spaces as a site.

I have designed a space where residents can grow edible plants such as herbs, fruits and vegetables and do gardening as well so that they also can enjoy the foods which are grown by them and it also contains both sense of public and private qualities which provide communities in this apartment. Two to three big families which are composed of approximately 16-18 people live in this space. We used white schemes for whole space, because we want the space to be a background and the gardens and plants to be a main focus so that we can create different moods through the colours of gardens.

The restriction and limitedness of the site made us to think about ways of avoiding further reduction of usable spaces that would result from using a standard system. We decided to use a structure called 'building without walls’ and it allowed the building to be well designed and constructed in interesting and appropriate ways in terms of its structure. Through, ‘building without wall’ structure, we were able to extend the spaces as well as allowing the environment to be provided with maximum sunlight and ventilated well. This allowed us to understand how the appropriate structure has a positive and interesting effects and changes on the building. The use of ‘building without wall’ structure, created different atmospheres of brightness, lightness and even freshness despite the dark site conditions. A possibility of a change of atmosphere and mood of space through the structure was interesting and impressive enough to develop our project and idea.

Since the spaces are small and restricted, to be efficient, I tried to carefully design and plan the spaces because minor decision can have a large impact. Using the ‘building without wall’ structure, however, brought up a problem that there is no privacy, the whole space is open to public. Because the space is small and narrow, I did not want any wasted spaces. Therefore I used interior walls as garden as well as plants as walls, creating a screen of plants that mask the privacy of the space and the residents as well. It was really interesting when we assigned another function to the walls because we have had a prejudice that a wall only functions as a thresholds which divide spaces. I tried to show a possibility that programs of functions of the space are changeable and transformable according to the structure. In our opinion, we were able to show the richness of space not through the amount of program or function in the space but through how the space is programmed in an appropriate way and how the function is achieved in a suitable space.

This project contains the critical context of creating restricted space which has interaction that explores the sense of public community. The community is built through the spaces of library and gardens. Both spaces contains contrasted communities but these spaces were able to create harmony and balance to this apartment. In our design the public spaces are surrounding the private spaces. The level one , seven and eight are the public spaces and the other floors are the private spaces. The library spaces are placed at level one and six floors. The level one library contains public community which is open to publics. The level one library also contains little café which is also open to public which further develop the communications in this space. The level six library contains the private community through only containing private memories such as family albums, books and videos. The level 7 and 8 floors are gardening spaces which contains the sense of public space. These spaces are only open for the families in our space and restricted to the other residents but the foods that are grown by the families are open to other residents. All the other levels are the spaces where gardens are interspersed with every room and every space so that the spaces create interesting experiences for the residents and they can enjoy and communicate with the harmony of the spaces in their daily life.

For the indoor gardening, we are using a system called “hydroponic system”. I used this system for the gardens and plants which functions as a wall. Inside the wall, there is a water tank and there is an air pump which allows water to be pumped and grow plants. There is a drain system inside as well so that the water can be returned to the tank, so there is a recirculation as well. This system works by temporarily flooding the grow tray with water and then draining the water back into the tank. This action is normally done with a pump that is connected to a timer. When the timer turns the pump on water is pumped into the grow tray. When the timer shuts the pump off the water flows back into the tank. The Timer is set to turn on several times a day, depending on the size and type of plants, temperature and humidity. The pump can be operated by electricity, or natural energies.

Since there are water tanks under the floors of each levels, I was able to use the hydroponic system for the plants here and there as well and there are some plants which residents have to grow personally.