Architectural Synthesis: Three Cases, One Hybrid

In this course, we first learned to analyze existing structures. That is, we tried to find and predict the reality. We tried to understand how these structures remain standing and what different materials or geometries require. Analyzing a structure was quite difficult at the beginning of the semester, but now it's much easier. It's a skill that develops with a little experience.

  The first structure I had to research was Casa Gomez. This house was designed by Jorge Garibay Architecture and is a brutalist structure located in Mexico. It's built using solid concrete blocks, like Lego blocks, where each block supports the others. Because it's made of concrete, and concrete is a heavy material, the load is actually carried by the walls together, with few dividing walls.

In the second round, we needed to understand how roofs are constructed, how the roof itself supports the structure, what materials are used, and if there's a strategy used in its construction. We also needed to integrate this roof, which we researched in the first case, into the structure whose load-bearing elements we understood. I think the difficult part of this assignment was bringing the two strategies together, since each case has its own unique strategy.

The second structure I needed to research was Fallingwater House. I'm sure even people unfamiliar with architecture have seen this building at least once. It's worth noting that this building is very generous in terms of roofs and terraces. Fallingwater uses layering to combine these terraces and roofs, with each element having its own unique support system. Reverse beams are used on the terraces, while the support system is embedded in the concrete where there's only a roof.

Of course, integrating both the layering and these different support systems into the existing structure required a slight increase in size. To make the layering strategy visible from the outside, I raised some of the load-bearing walls and added terrace and roof combinations with different geometries and cantilever sizes. I believe these variations better reflect the even or irregular layering strategy that is noticeable in Fallingwater.

Our final, third case involves circulation elements, which we all inevitably encounter and pay attention to in our daily lives. These circulation elements, too, required us to examine their materials, structures, and strategies within a different building and then integrate them into our newly constructed home. In this case, my design was the Double House. This building, designed by MVRDV, is frankly very interesting from the outside. Moreover, its most striking feature isn't even its circulation. In this building, the original owners of the land didn't have enough money to finance the house, so they found a partner and essentially gave him 1/3 of the house, dividing it in a zigzag pattern, like a key and lock. If you ask why it's divided this way instead of straight, it's because they wanted to benefit from the view in a similar way. Also, this zigzag form prevents the living spaces from being small and fragmented. It takes from one side and gives to another, without dividing the living space. Returning to our main point, most circulation elements have glass on both sides, and these are often stacked vertically. In this way, we can also perceive the circulation as a vertical space from the outside.

After all this research, adding these circulation elements to my own project wasn't difficult at all because they were already similar to the building's original staircases. I only added stairs to connect the terraces, but I added them in a similar way, stacked on top of each other.

After making all these arrangements and finalizing the integrated model, all that remained was to gather all this information together. Frankly, I think researching structures in this way and learning through experimentation has greatly changed my perspective on buildings. They even changed my way of understanding them; now when I see a building, I can put the grid on top of it or instinctively understand its structural system.