HAUS OF (BAD) PROPORTIONIZING

CORE II—HARVARD GSD
​SPRING 2020 (COVID-19)
INSTRUCTOR: SERGIO LOPEZ-PINEIRO

Harvard University has an unusual campus building typology indistinguishable from the domestic home. This project attempts to critique this trend by tampering with the proportions of the domestic scale to better indicate civic scales of residential typologies while maintaining and exaggerating common motifs of residential buildings such as the dormer. The dormer behaves as both a collection of thresholds and a system for bracketing separate rooms, people, or architectural elements into one legible unit. After establishing the dormer as a unit, it can be deployed throughout the meeting house to produce different situations for combining spaces and connecting patrons. The dormer's position as either extruded or inverted enables or disables bridges between detached rooms to join programmatic subdivision. The awning associated with the dormer extends and zigzags beyond the facade towards the interior, producing instances of intersection and overlap between the ceilings that unite disjunctive spaces through shared ventilation and light apertures. The profile generated by the assemblage of stacked dormers reverberates through the building to construct a consequential central atrium whose silhouette mimics that of the facade. The organizational structure informed by the volume profiles breaks down at the building's corners and adopts unusual moments of connection to resolve siting, joining of two facades, and profile blending.
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