DAISY AMES

The other elective I am taking this semester, along with Peter Eisenman’s Diagrammatic Analysis course on Piranesi’s Campo Marzio, is Steven Harris’ Site and Building class. I am really excited about this class because designing homes is my ultimate goal in architecture. We have to give a presentation on the specific way a house of our choice relates to the site - dissecting every designed inch of it! Really awesome to see and learn the motives behind each move. I have chosen Tadao Ando’s Koshino House in Kobe, Japan completed in 1984.

I was not familiar with this project, but looking forward to studying it more after spending some time looking at drawings and images. I enjoy the way the house reacts to the constraints of the sloping site, and how it appears to intricately nestle and stubbornly interject it at the same time. This provides a reading from within the house that harmonizes the physical state and phenomenological occurrences in relation to light, transparency and program. 

I also appreciate that this house can be analyzed as an independent diagram as well as an organic resultant of the site - both cases which reinforce the simple plan. I’d like to understand why this house appears to be so sound, but hopefully prove myself wrong in the process of analysis.