mansion
 
 
-A mansion is a house whose floor area is between 750-6,000 m2 and may be either a single villa, an ensemble of buildings or an interconnected enclave.
 
-To build a house upon bare ground is ideal. Judgements upon size, mass and situation taken in accord of propriety, topography, aspect and so on, lead to an approximation of the ideal container, the disposition of which may require the construction of a suitable approach.
 
-Whilst a mansion has many different rooms for dwelling in, it will also contain several special rooms designed to accommodate the patron’s own particular interests.
 
-In addition to activity and desired interrelationships, the seasonal usage of rooms determines their size and aspect and thus, an overall arrangement in turn. To inhabit the building is to experience its private relationship to the outside (though in any case a garden is desirable).
 
-Interlinked rooms mean a circulation that is rich and not precisely defined. There will therefore be at least a secondary means of circulation (and between floors) that maintains the privacy within ‘salon’ spaces.
 
-A result of simple and generous volumes optimally configured is smaller pockets and slack space. These allow adjustment towards the buildings final condition of repose, one that is not too strained, nor too slack. It is important to retain some of such consequential spaces for secret rooms that are not readily understood within the hierarchy of rooms and the overall whole.
 
-The front and rear elevations of the building adjust in character according to the interior, and the elevations aspect and role; north and south, public and private, formal and more relaxed respectively.
 
-When possible, a mansion will have one or more outbuildings, as a counterpoint to the formality of the main house.
 
-Materials and construction are durable and lasting, as is required for a building that may live through several incarnations. Indeed to achieve this the structural and spatial composition will tolerate adaptation.
 
-Its shape, material and overall ambience will feel new yet strangely familiar, having something of the communal and the dwelling about them.
 
-A mansion should always be considered a house, but one whose exceptional scale and quality establish a legacy, since the patron is merely a custodian for future generations.

Students are invited to design a very large house that has a public aspect to it. Whether situated within the landscape or the city, the project is a building of rooms both inside and out. Propositions will seek to evolve the concept of the mansion and its future civic role.

Semester 1:

A reading of exemplar buildings with thematic links to the programme.
Field trips on which to study these at first hand.
Identification of individual sites and studies.
Massing and formal/organisational concept.

Semester 2:

Material and structural character.
Development of key rooms, sequences and relationships.
Material linings - room and circulatory views.