Marie Short House / Glenn Murcutt House

摘要

What kind of vision did you have for this house? My earliest buildings were influenced by Mies-ian Modernism, but my design for the Marie Short House was very different, and very personal -it grew out of things I learned when I was a boy. Before I became interested in architecture I was interested in flight. I designed model aircraft, and I learned that when air passes over a curved wing it becomes speeded up and produces a layer of low pressure and lift. Years later, I used that idea when I designed the roof at the Short house. The roof echoes the shapes of nearby historic farm sheds, but, really, I used the curved roofs to speed up the prevailing wind as it passes, and have it suck out hot air from the gap between the flat ceiling and the curved ridge. I made the walls layers of glass louvres and aluminium slats and mesh screens that could be adjusted as the weather changed - like sailing a yacht, or flying a small plane. That became one of the guiding ideas of all my subsequent works -the idea that you participate in the life of your house. You live with the building - you don•t just live in it.