Natalie Sitt

The design of the building form is derived from two atlas images:

1.     Hopkins House, 1976, Michael and Patty Hopkins. The idea of fragility and elegance not only comes through the thin structural components but also the efficiency to appropriate the space. Within an industrial volume constructed by uniform components, the space is domesticated with a landscape of furniture.

The image captures the project's honesty to its structure, it is cohabitation with the assembly itself, without additives of furnishments.

2.     Leiden Masterplan, 2002, Peter Zumthor. The masterplan was Zumthor's approach to preserve the industrial complex, and at the same time reappropriate the existing structural skeleton. Similar to how the Hopkins House exposes the trusses and columns to a domestic space. Zumthor's idea also retains the original character to the structural elements, allowing new guests to recognise its formal history Zumthor preserves and emphasizes the beauty of the unique, basic, load-bearing skeletons, highlights their value and repurpose the urban zone.

Lightness could be defined physically as the weight of the materials, but what excites me the most are more qualitative aspects of lightness. It cannot be quantified or specified but relates a lot to the visual appearance of structures, components and spaces. How do we capture lightness in the building?

Spatial lightness is achieved through the play of transparencies.

"Transparency means a simultaneous perception of different spatial locations. Space not only recedes but fluctuates in a continuous activity" - an essay by Rowe & Slutzky. Within a building, given a certain depth to the space, which might obstruct light flowing into it, the layering of space and components become vital in determining the lightness.

The lightweight structure, in turn, constructs open and flexible spaces within. Without internal divisions, there is no distinction between different programs. The structure is designed to be easy to assemble, to change, to replicate and to occupy.

Designing with lightness also reveals a set of problems to be considered, thermal and acoustics are to be designed within. As the proposal is evolving through different programs with the use of components, privacy is to be designed. How should the structure be designed to formalise the variance and resilience without compromising lightness? The design of the programs, in terms of furnishings and partitions should convey the idea of camping and temporality overall.

Fabrication + Education + Living

The three programs are always imagined to be separate. It is the project's ambition to bring the three together under the generosity of the building form. Namely Resilience Assemblages, the project supports a gathering of individuals and technology brought together for a common purpose.

My building is designed as a standing invitation to re-appropriate the different spaces over time, encouraging the students to interact both internally and externally and entice the community inwards. It is also designed to support a creative community to grow within the building and also the campus.

My project provides a generous skeleton for the best appropriation of an architectural institution. The robustness, lightness and sustainability of both the building and the program hope to allow the project to remain relevant through the present and well into the future within the campus.

My project is situated right next to the main town square. Both facades face their respective courtyards.

Lightness to the building allows the program of architectural education to be permeable and engaging to other campus users. I would like to design the building as an active screen, where people from the outside could view towards the working spaces, but at the same time, the users could operate their own shadings among themselves.

The building form itself is fixed, but the activities from within, the devices designed, the furnitures placed make the project ever-changing.

The ideal of this institution is no longer just allowing students to learn from lectures and studio work, but the versatility to create communities, facilitate collaboration and make chance encounters happen. This additional program generates a place that connects and shares in a multitude of ways, as well as presents opportunities for collaboration.

It is a form created by versatility, but also generosity enables the community.