If I Lived My Life Again

Abstract

This thesis looks into the genre of residential design, more specifically the stand-alone house or simply, the villa. It seeks to produce a final design - the Pavilion House - which is unique to both it’s site and to it’s occupants, a house which is site and persona specific.

Whilst many contemporary house designs are just that; many fail to relate to their site or convey anything of the accrued narrative of their occupiers or the site. They are site and persona neutral. This lack of integration can have a negative impact on the dwelling experience of the occupier, and serve to add little architectural value to the immediate site and surrounding context.

This thesis investigates the implementation of specific design tools which enable the successful integration of existing site with introduced architecture, allowing a site and persona specific design to be reached every time.

The Right Hon. Sir S. Winston Churchill, legendary former Prime Minister of Great Britain, will be the client (persona) for the Pavilion House. Churchill’s much loved country estate of Chartwell in Kent in southeast England, will be the research site. Both Chartwell and Churchill offer a rich, multi-layered and narratively rich canvas upon which the questions of this thesis can be addressed.

Along with a thorough investigation of both site and client, the classic ordering device the Nine Square Grid and the attribute of axiality will investigated as the site integration tools.

Renowned art historian Rudolf Wittkower maintains that the development of the ground plan through the application of the Nine Square grid is the distinguishing feature of the Palladian villa, and as such this thesis prioritises development of the ground plan in its search for a 21st century Palladian villa - The Pavilion House.

Axiality, the third site integration tool to be investigated, is one of Seven Fields of Attributes identified by Architect Ola Nylander in his doctoral thesis entitled “The Individuality of the Home” (October 1998). Nylander identified these attributes as a pragmatic approach to the measurable and non-measurable architectural qualities of a house. Here it will be investigated as an attribute which not only improves the dwelling experience offered by a house, but also aids the integration of the house with the site.

This thesis does not set out to find an autobiographical house that will relate to only one client, but one that allows future dwellers to project their own narrative onto it, enabling them to appropriate it as their own – for it to then become home to them.

The final house will be able to do this as it draws upon collective memory; a primal and intuitive understanding of movement through space, aided by the implementation of Nylander’s attribute of axiality. Which is why the Nine Square Grid has been brought onto Churchill’s lawn. The Pavilion House will be seen to relate to a certain inner soul that exists almost anywhere, within almost anyone.