164
A. Del Bo et al.
3 Idea and Development of Multi-storey Linear Building
The settlement unit designed for Scalo Farini is defined by two elements: the courtyard house and the multi-storey linear building. Both elements are designed with
common aims that can be synthesized under the terms of flexibility and standardization.
The main reference about the building studied here is placed in the townhouses
designed by Mies van der Rohe at Lafayette Park in Detroit.
The starting requirement consists of a possible overlapping of the Detroit block
townhouses. The aim posed consists to achieve a solution formed by duplex apartments and provided with a corridor at alternate floors.
The interest towards Detroit’s townhouses is due to the progress on the typological
solution that is represented. It contains the traditional characters of the townhouses
although shows an interesting solution about the bedroom distribution at the first
floor related to the limits of the living room at the ground floor.
Through an ingenious solution of the façade subdivision in three parts, Mies van
der Rohe reached a development of the type starting from the traditional characters
of the townhouse.
An analogous solution, in terms of distribution, was studied by Josep Lluís Sert
for Casa Bloc, in Barcelona, 1933. Also here, the apartments are duplex served with
an internal small stair that leads to the room floor where Sert proposed a similar
distributive solution that will adopted by Mies in Detroit but without the same clarity
about the relationship with structure, façade partition and space.
This difference in term of measure among the living room and the upper bedrooms,
however, is not contained in a clear drawing of the fronts as in the case of Detroit.
In fact, in Casa Bloc this problem is masked. The façade of the Casa Bloc is drawn
by horizontal strips of the lodges and horizontal windows. But the windows are not
related to each room: for three rooms correspond two windows and one of it is placed
across two rooms. In the drawing of townhouses, Mies contains the difference within
a unified design where the relationship with the steel structure is inseparable to the
spatial division of the dwelling.
The design of the multi-storey linear building comes from a philological process
because it is based on the original building shape designed by Mies, redrawn through
the analysis of the sources as, for example, Mies’s Drawings Archives, thanks to
the several surveys and the different reconstructions of the original Lafayette Park
proposal carried out by our resource unit about this important settlement in the last
decade. However, that process is not only concerned with the reproduction of the
same building but tends to develop it in a progressive way starting to the clear and
not-modifiable aspects of the reference.
The comprehension of the structural system of Lafayette townhouses, reproposed
in this project, represents a fundamental passage for correct knowledge. Is necessary
refer to two combined homes. The sketch posed on the text side is realized for this
necessity.
A. Del Bo et al.
3 Idea and Development of Multi-storey Linear Building
The settlement unit designed for Scalo Farini is defined by two elements: the courtyard house and the multi-storey linear building. Both elements are designed with
common aims that can be synthesized under the terms of flexibility and standardization.
The main reference about the building studied here is placed in the townhouses
designed by Mies van der Rohe at Lafayette Park in Detroit.
The starting requirement consists of a possible overlapping of the Detroit block
townhouses. The aim posed consists to achieve a solution formed by duplex apartments and provided with a corridor at alternate floors.
The interest towards Detroit’s townhouses is due to the progress on the typological
solution that is represented. It contains the traditional characters of the townhouses
although shows an interesting solution about the bedroom distribution at the first
floor related to the limits of the living room at the ground floor.
Through an ingenious solution of the façade subdivision in three parts, Mies van
der Rohe reached a development of the type starting from the traditional characters
of the townhouse.
An analogous solution, in terms of distribution, was studied by Josep Lluís Sert
for Casa Bloc, in Barcelona, 1933. Also here, the apartments are duplex served with
an internal small stair that leads to the room floor where Sert proposed a similar
distributive solution that will adopted by Mies in Detroit but without the same clarity
about the relationship with structure, façade partition and space.
This difference in term of measure among the living room and the upper bedrooms,
however, is not contained in a clear drawing of the fronts as in the case of Detroit.
In fact, in Casa Bloc this problem is masked. The façade of the Casa Bloc is drawn
by horizontal strips of the lodges and horizontal windows. But the windows are not
related to each room: for three rooms correspond two windows and one of it is placed
across two rooms. In the drawing of townhouses, Mies contains the difference within
a unified design where the relationship with the steel structure is inseparable to the
spatial division of the dwelling.
The design of the multi-storey linear building comes from a philological process
because it is based on the original building shape designed by Mies, redrawn through
the analysis of the sources as, for example, Mies’s Drawings Archives, thanks to
the several surveys and the different reconstructions of the original Lafayette Park
proposal carried out by our resource unit about this important settlement in the last
decade. However, that process is not only concerned with the reproduction of the
same building but tends to develop it in a progressive way starting to the clear and
not-modifiable aspects of the reference.
The comprehension of the structural system of Lafayette townhouses, reproposed
in this project, represents a fundamental passage for correct knowledge. Is necessary
refer to two combined homes. The sketch posed on the text side is realized for this
necessity.