Introduction: House Architecture // Computer Architecture
Inspired by the computer structure, I'm building my house in Paris. Please comment and inspire me.
Also on cesar harada _ space
Step 1: 1985 : Step 1 Hehehe
my family arrived long ago in here, we used to live the 5 of us in this 30m2 at the beginning. Now my brother went away and my parents allow me to live in here for the two coming 2 years if i don't have anywhere else. So i started to rebuild this appartment also because it became dirty and impossible to live in now as there was a squat above with a lot of plumbery disasters on us ...
I want to make this construction a cool project, that's why i put it in instructables, it's a on going project i'm building those days, day after day, and i hope to have some feedbacks and ideas from little instructables geniuses ! Thanks !
My main idea is to build this house like a computer, modulable, fluid, compact, strong, user-friendly, warm, beautifull, simple ...{{{
HELP ME !
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Step 2: 2006 : My Parents Work
My parents repared this flat and we all lived there for some years. Than my elder brother who is an exellent lawyer but not very involved in house reparing lived in for almost 10 years and the building aged very fast.
Water infiltrations, dangerous electric installation, global humidity and coldness, insufficient lighting, floor and wall desagregation, parasites in insultaion .... too many problems to be face ... I decided with my parents agreeement and financial support to rebuild it entirely ... from scratch !
Step 3: DEATHSTROY !
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
karate technics were usefull for this part !
Step 4: Building Up a New Little World !
This space is pretty much like a cube 5 x 6 x 4 (deep x large x high) m.
My desire was to make it like a factory : a moving bridge would enable to move massive objecs in this tiny space. The nature of the floor (above caves) revealed this project was impossible + the presence of such an industrial machine (costy as well) would ba a problem if htis space had to be rented in the future.
I immediatley saw that i need a floor to have a "clean" living space, as many of my activities are dusty or noisy. So the mezanine was a good solution, possible with 4m high ceiling but only possible with a thin and strong metallic strucutre.
I wanted the front of my appartment to be openable by it's half, like a theater scene (imagine a dance piece starting in an appartment just as soon as you open the door the entire space opens up to the street !), but i wasn't legaly allowed of such an important front change (paris urbanism law are strict on this point).
Step 5: Concrete Floor
we didn't have the budget to have a motorised rotating concrete machine so i had to do 5tons of concrete by hand. It was a tiring option.
The entire electric cicuit was underground, which is very efficient but has some weak points :
- impossible to move or adapt, upgrade
-dangerous when you drill the floor deep (but this doesn't happen much ... hehe )
i found out that even in a small apartment you quickly end up with a lot of cables so i did some "tressage" with it to make it fit, so good !
The concrete was finished with a thin layer of "ré-agréage". We had not enough of it so we diluted it : very bad idea : my floor is more fragile where the liquid concrete was too diluted (budget ! grr).
Step 6: De Divinae Proportions
The largst door i was allowed to do not to overpass paris urbanistic law is this size, that will do.
The door opens up and down, so an object as large as the outer frame can enter this little house !!! I can almost build a car inside (NEXT INSTRUCTABLE !).
I insisted on the locking system (the windows as well) and photo detail will be here after the window is built and installed in the reality, some steps further.
Step 7: Insulation
for sound and cold i had to put isulation.
When you have a fat pile of insulation taking your entire living room you can see that i takes a lot of volume ... but ! ... after you have posed it on every wall you just forgt how immense the volume it use to take ! But ! ! you feel a slight reduction in your apprtment volume still ... but ! it's a little wamer and sounds sounds smoother ... your neighbours start to forget about you again, fortunately ...
Step 8: LIGHT !
than i installe two tracks of neons !
My house looks like a lightbox out from the street, it's beuatifully white and blinding ! So clear .
Step 9: White Invisible Ceiling
Than i painted the ceiling white and pasted the angles of the wall with plaster to make them curve, to reflect the light and make this space a lot smoother ! if you get close to the ceiling the limit between the walls and the ceiling disapears : at the begining it's disturbing because you can't see what is what, but than the impression youy get is super smooth ...
Step 10: Mezanine
now construction inside the construction : the mezanine.
I wanted a simple super-strong mezanine, to sleep, study, make love, have my books, computers, clothing upstairs, far from the dust ...
The mezanine would be also here to protect intimacy : i want to be able to welcome my guests in a simple white box and still have my mess behind the slim door : japanese mobile door will slive and possibly ocver the entire mezanine content in the future, leaving the rest of the space PURE EXPERIMENTATION AND WORK-FUN !
Step 11: First Hated Wall
i had to build this wall to separate the bathroom in the back from the kitchen (intimacy...).
I hate building walls.
In the coming days, i'm going to have to order the wood to build the floor and the furnitures.
I want to build this space and it's module like a computer is designed, logical, simple, functionnal, adjustable and strong.
I want to build and organise my bookshelves like in librairies.
I want ot build my cloth boxes in the shape of a body.
I want to put my electric circuits like a computer.
I want to organise air and hitting, water hitting like computer ventilation.
ect ect ....
So this is where i am today (june 2007) : so if you have any idea, reference of similar project, suggestions, please HELP ME, the project is under development !
Thanks !
Step 12: New Door Step
I had to replace the old door step by a new one : carve the old one and remove a little bit more of concrete to enlarge the door. Afer removing the old one I drew a larger one and asked my father (stone sculptor) to cut one for me in granite (arigato otosan !). While I was replacing the door step, the room became very vulnerable to robbery, so I simply made two massive holes to put a heavy chain through the door + a big british lock.
Step 13: New Door !
Shortly after the new doorstep I received the door i designed long ago (step6) : a steel frame finished with epoxy (cooked epoxy is hard**** finish but so $$$$ it hurts). So we had to cut the front of the building with big stone cutting saw and remove the glass carefully from a little scaffolding. We dug many anchor point in the existing facade to set the door stable, all fixed with quick hardening cement. We installed the frame first, than the door without the glass). The first night the new door was locked with the chain, to leave me the time to install the door proper lock. The door has 3 locking points and when open is H-U-G-E (180cm wide) ! The side that is holding the windows had to be re-inforced by an extra steel bar I tapped to the doorframe.
Thanks to Martin and Nasser for their help !!!! INSTRUCTABLES PARIS IN DA HOUSE !
Step 14: Polish and Paint
The beautiful days arrived, summer was here ! So i took the chance to paint the front of the building first floor (they wouldn't let me paint only my place !). I also installed the glass on the window : I placed simple glass with plastic joints. The glass is pinched between the door and a removable "U" steel frame inserted smoothly hammered from the inside.
Step 15: Wooden Floor, Curtains
Than i installed wooden floor on the metallic structure. I tried to make an invisible junction between the four massive wood pieces with a mixture of polyurethane glue and wood dust, and wasn't very successfull in terms of aesthetic as polyurethane expands when it dries : i had to remove some glue and correct the levels so the floor doesn't look perfect as some layers of the plywood appears on some junction ... but the joint is very strong ... I prefer liability to beauty ...this time hehehe !
On the pictures you can see that I already started to live in there : I had to write a thesis "forcefeedback systems" that is still in progress (i hand in september 2007 hopefully and it will be freely downloadable by the way !). For intimacy I installed stainless steel cables and sewed simple white curtains with a double layer at the bottom so people in the streets can't see through. The rings are fixed on the curtain are also stainless steel so the curtain miraculously slides on the cable SSSWWWWWWWIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPP !
While living in this 'white cube' I noticed the anormal presence of dust especially in the computer's venitlation ... where was it coming from ? ...
Step 16: Using the Space : Testing the White Cube : Writting an Essay
I feel extremely lucky to have had this wonderful white wall for myself for writting this thesis ! I could just organise my brain _ like the essay _ like the space around me, it was marvellous to be living -litteraly- inside my brain, i was like i a dream : with the curtain closed, just stopping working for some food and some sleep sometimes. I got so autistic in this space !
I write on little white papers that i stick with adhesive on walls : I cut and glue, I continuously reconfigure and re-structure my thinking. I love the idea that modules can be also divided, to have the minimum static entity inside a coherent impure ensemble.
Using this thinking, I want to have the minimum of "immobilier" (french for construction in the building) and a maximum of "mobilier" (mobile furniture) so I can easily reconfigure my space.
Step 17: Sliding Doors !
As planned, helped by Evan Hill, James Hohenberger (carpentry) Brook Hsu (adjusting) and Joti Poirier (moral support and cookies !) we cutted and adjusted these wonderful sliding doors. THANKS AMERICA !
The upper ones are designed in a japanese traditional way : no metal, no mecanic, simple boards slinding into adjusted and waxed rails.
The lower one are made with the occidental industrial style : simple wooden boards suspended to "little rolling cars" (a couple for each board) in "U" shaped steel profiles. I decided not to put any guide fixed to the floor downstairs as the door are suspended (they shouldn't bend too much as they are suspended vertically ... i hope ).
Both system are extremely efficient and in 10cm depth it was possible to fit 4 layers of doors ! I have 8 sliding doors on each level, so when all aligned to the minimum, the space can look very open. To the contrary, when all closed it provides a very isolated room upstairs as downstairs : you can cook downstairs or sleep upstairs when someone is with the light on in the 'working area'.
Step 18: Public Test of the Space _ SELF SELECT, Fashion-art-performance by Yoshinari NISHIO
The construction was interrupted again shortly after making the doors by the exhibition SELF SELECT of Yoshinari NISHIO, fashion artist from Tokyo. For me it was also the occasion to see how people behave in this space becoming public. The small size of the galery, the big size of the door, the quiet nice street proved that the outside is equaly confortable in the summer. Many peope came to see the exhibition, I never announced the 'opening of the galery' and everyone behaved like it always existed heheeh !! Photos by Takashi Usui.
Step 19: Plumbery, Fixed Furnitures
Now I'm fixing the last electric details and the plumbery. I hope I'm building the last fixed furnitures, I want the rest to be as mobile as possible. So I'm now installing the toilet, a little sink, a shower (large), a double sink (kitchen). I will do the gas with a mobile bottle so the gaz furniture can move. Only furniture dealing with water are going to have to be fixed ... That wasn't my original plan though : i wanted to have one main evacuation and direct all cables to it, i wanted to able to shower anywhere in the house .... but it was too expensive to do so ...
SO THIS IS HOW FAR I AM NOW (JULY 2007) please ccomment and tell me what you think, any suggestion is warmly welcomed ! Make me update this if I happen to forget ! THANK YOU VERY MUCH !
I usualy publish first here cheers ! and thanks for reading !
cesar
