HOUSE DRESS

All of this drawing of Kawakubo’s garments got me thinking about form and space. Form as in something interesting and unique to look at.  Space as a volume for a human.  One of the most common complaints about her dresses is that they have volumes attached to them which are not functional. These formal additions have been called grotesque, as it appeared that the body had unnatural growths and humps.

Now think of a typical house with a typical gable roof. In 99% of the cases, the gable roof is not part of the living space. Rather, the gable roof is an added  volume, just as the volumes are in a Kawakubo dress.  Most gable roof houses have flat ceilings, and the gable form is an uninsulated, uninhabitable, additive volume.

While we might decry the addition of a non useable shape to give form in clothing, we have accepted without question a non useable volume on the top of our houses for centuries.

I hereby propose the concept of House Dress. And this is the way it works. You get to add to the basic living volume the volumetric equivalent of the gable volume. And you can add it any way you want. You don’t have to worry about function. You just get to add it to provide an interesting form.

In both drawings above, the red is the gable attachment.  And the black is the redistribution of that gable volume around the living volume.  Note that the redistributed volume is not necessarily liveable.  The only point is to create some sort of form with deep cultural overtones.

And it has to be the exact volume of the gable roof. So a gable roof with a 12/12 roof slope has more volume than a roof with a 4/12.  With this symbolism metric, a greater amount of added volume is more traditional, since the more historical the house, the steeper the roof slope.

Would this be historical?  Hell yes!  The volume is the same.  So we would not be putting “on” anything more than what is permitted by historical formulae.

How would this play in suburbia?  Quite well.  Again the red depict the additive volume in gable form.  And the black forms are the redistribution of that same exact volume.  This respects the sideyard setbacks.  It is under the height restrictions.  It is volumetrically, and thus historically, correct.

And most likely someone will drive by and say, that’s grotesque!

Transparent Drawing Spin Off Project.  If you are looking for something to do, start a blog or some other publication with the topic House Dress.  Devise the myriad ways in which this idea can be enriched and embellished.  Which historical house styles typically have the most unused additive volume?  Which have the least?  Which style of house works best with House Dress?  What are the typical ratios between living and non living cubic footages?  Is there a correlation between the living / additive volumes and energy useage?  Is there a correlation between additive volumes and the pleasure that one gets from dwelling within?  I’m sure there are scores more questions like these.  Ask readers to contribute their drawings.  Have a museum exhibition.  

This is not the first time that we have looked at additive forms to the gable suburban house.  See Suburban Ground Effects for example.