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literal manifestation of this working method. It could be argued that model-making is ostensibly
a Modernist methodology, adopted to distance architecture from the Beaux Arts tradition and its
reliance upon drawing. However, Caruso St John have strong views on the importance of
continuing historical architectural traditions and an aversion to perspective, another form of
representation generally aligned with Modernism in its architectural deployment.
The Brick House is clearly a departure in form-making for Caruso St John, from the orthogonal
and rectilinear geometry that has characterised their built work to date. The faceted geometry of
the project bears a strong resemblance to their scheme for the Nottingham Centre for Visual
and Live Art, but it is difficult not to draw a connection with the similarly surprising geometric
transition recently observed in the work of Herzog and de Meuron.
Caruso points out that in
both the Brick House and their Nottingham scheme, the building form could be seen as an
expression of the site form and notes that his practice has utilized faceted geometry in many of
their competition projects. He also points out that they are currently using curves on another
project and rectilinear geometry on several others. He speculates that the shift may be partly
simply a consequence of their increasing confidence, but remarks that there seems to be a
general interest amongst architects in faceted geometry.
Caruso St John have stated that the plan of the Brick House ‘is completely separate from the
typologies of the London townhouse or the inner city loft’. ‘It’s not very typological’,
asserts
Caruso, claiming that even their initial impulse to utilize a courtyard house plan to bring light into
the building was thwarted by the footprint of the site, which established a conflict between the
size of the courtyard and the living spaces. As a sequence of interior and exterior rooms,
however, the house could be understood as a combination of the detached North American
suburban house and a small civic building. Contributing to the latter interpretation, is the use of
faceted openings in roof
of the building, which permit shafts of light
into the house and frame
fragments of the surrounding buildings. The building’s civic character will be furthered by the
introduction of two different types of bespoke and sculptural lighting designed by the architects.
While the house is a spatial hybrid and can be read formally as cave and tent, one can equally
comprehend the building as synthesis of the typologies of bunker and chapel. London has a
long history of siege, from the Blitz, through the IRA, to the city’s most recent brush with
terrorism. In this context, this interpretation of the Brick House as a new defensive London
housing typology seems chillingly appropriate.
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