The Inside-Out House

Interview to the architect (identity withheld at P.R. agent’s request)

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By:  Eriana Dugan Aminillo

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Eriana Dugan Aminillo:  Good evening, Mr. (IWAPRAR)

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Architect (IWAPRAR):  Thank you, Miss Dugan.  And a very good evening to you, too!

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EDA:  All right, thanks so much for conceding to sit down with us tonight and chat a little regarding one of your latest works, the Phoenix, Arizona house located in Central City, and taking up two urban blocks, between South 11th street, South 12th Street, and Buckeye Road to the North and Yuma Street to the South.  So how does the project come into being?

Architect (IWAPRAR):  Well, the owners who are also good friends call me up one day and say they’re finally serious about pursuing a new custom home in Phoenix - after years of shooting the breeze with me over cappuccinos, margaritas or burros, they finally want to sit down and do some serious brainstorming.  They need help for everything required to make the project a reality, including defining their objectives, finding the land, designing the architecture, DD’s, CD’s, specs, permitting, financing, construction management, interior design, selecting artwork, commissioning, putting together a maintenance plan.  Now I’d venture to say that you’d be more interested in everything previous to Design Development, right?

EDA:  As far as the scope of this article, yes.  Especially the “designing of the architecture” part that you just mentioned.

Architect (IWAPRAR):  No problem.  Well, unless you got copious amounts of cash, which I don’t, you, as an architect, depend on commissions to see your architectural ideas built, as we in our field know.  In this case, were it not for a very specific wish list on the part of the client, well, you have to give it to them, clients.  They’re a huge part of the reason why finished projects are what they are, for better or for worse.  In this case, they requested from the outset:  First, an urban site, as close as possible to Downtown Phoenix without the price per square foot shooting up too high, because, second, they wanted a site large enough that you felt as though you’re not in the middle of Phoenix at all, but in the countryside, with an ample buffer zone between the house and the streets.  And noisy overhead jets were no problem!  So of course Nuestro Barrio was a prime candidate and it prevailed in the end.  Third, I mean, get this:  they dreamed of a house where “every room” would have ample and equal – meaning exactly the same - view of the exterior landscape.  Fourth, a house where “no one room would be second to another”.  And fifth and last, and this one’s, finally, a rather simple request:  a pool that’s as close to the house as possible, with ample shade.

EDA:  Wow.  Idiosyncratic starting requirements, to put it mildly!  So walk us through, then, around how you addressed these requests, if you don’t mind.

Architect (IWAPRAR):  Be thrilled to.  So we get the Nuestro Barrio site.  I won’t get into the dealings with the City and the residents.  Some relocations were easier than others, to put it mildly.  A little under 20 families still resided in what would become the site; luckily, few of them actual activists.  I mean, my clients - you see so many of the residents wanting to move out - my clients want to move in.  We worked with both the community and the Voluntary Acquisition and Relocation Services program, extensively.  Many a meeting was held and a coffee drunk and an emotion ran high at the Sylvestre S. Herrera Elementary, and even some money was put into helping the community lobby for fed dollars to be fed back into the area, pun not intended, and revitalize it, beautify it, for the benefit of the remaining residents.  Anyhow, we get the site.  Super.  Now, you got an eight-and-a-half acre site, and you got an architectural program that calls for a floor area, including closed and open covered, that shouldn’t exceed 25,000 square feet.  Meaning your house’s total surface area is 15 times less than your site’s surface area, and that means that you got your buffer, so long as you place your house right at or near the center of your site.  You further enlarge said buffer by densifying your program by making the house multistory.  That was the easy part, design wise, and you get your requests one and two covered.

EDA:  Ok, so, the same big view from every room, and making no room second in importance to another, right?  I see that you achieved that, but how was that solution fabricated, design wise?  How was that attained?

Architect (IWAPRAR):  You want to talk parti, right?

EDA:  Sure, if you don’t mind. 

Architect (IWAPRAR):  I do not mind at all.  I don’t often sit down and draw a diagram and then follow those rules as I design.  The parti is a consequence.  Useful, as a tool to communicate architectural ideas, of course.  But there’s a romantic misconception about it usually being a precursor to design, at least in my experience.  At least with real-life projects.  Projects that need to be built and need to enjoy a sustainable life cycle.  The concept that will eventually be illustrated through the parti diagram is born as a very simple idea that quickly is developed many times non linearly in your head, as a mix of mental images and text, one overtaking the previous one before it’s even completely finished usually, a turbulent flow, in text, written and audio, also images, simple and complex and in 3D and 2D, and, of course, you do go back and forth and refine all these as you go.  But yes, of course, a parti is useful in documenting this process. 

EDA:  Can you explain how it comes into being? 

Architect (IWAPRAR):  Sure, let’s start with a square in plan, to represent our project, in this case a single family home.  Very simple, let’s now ask how it helps in achieving our goals.  Well, let’s name this square “A” and everything outside it “B”, with the former representing our architecture, and the latter representing its surroundings.  The “Inside” and the “Out” if you will.  So, one, we want equal rooms, and I posit that the most important aspects in doing away with hierarchy will be shape and size.  So let’s divide our square up.  Let’s take two diagonal lines and divide our square into four pieces.  Now, the diagonal lines, what they do is that they create four triangles, and each of these has two sides now that are equal in length, and each of them shorter in length than the third, perimetral, “original” side.  The two shorter sides, or legs, are located inside, therefore in contact with “Inside”, while the longer side, hypotenuse, is part, again, of the perimeter, and thus in contact with “Outside”.  Let’s name the shorter sides the Inside Diagonals or “ID’s”, and the longer sides Outside Perimeter or “OP”.  Now, again, while each “ID” is shorter than its corresponding “OP”, the sum of the length of the “ID’s” of each triangle surpasses the length of a single “OP”, by, of course, approximately, 40%, since these are right triangles and their hypotenuse is equal to the square root of 2, so long as the legs are one, as Pythagoras made quite sure to tell everyone.  So now, what if we move these pieces, move each of these 4 triangles so that these diagonal sides, the “ID’s”, are the ones that are in contact with b, the outside, instead of the “OP’s”?  The inner surface has become the outer.  Or, the architecture has turned inside-out, if you will.  And, since we had defined “B”, the outside, as the zone that is adjacent to, or in contact with, “OP”, now the outside is inside - in the space previously occupied by “A”.  “A” has been fragmented and displaced, but has the same unit area.  The square “A” has now become the triangles “A1”, “A2”, “A3”, and “A4”.  And, the edges that are now in contact with the surrounding space are 40% longer.  But that surrounding space is not the same anymore.  It can’t be, since that space is the original outside which is now inside.  The new “outside”, that which is in contact with ID’s and not OP, must become another entity, let’s call it C.

EDA:  Wow.  And “C” becomes…?

Architect (IWAPRAR):  You take your typical single family home, the house is surrounded by a mowed, cared-for lawn.  In our case, the mowed, cared-for lawn is surrounded by the house.  The “outside” walls of the house still have a view of the lawn.  The guts, the innards, of the house – the main program that resides in A1, A2, A3 and A4 and that has now been exposed – have a view of the space that used to be, would normally be, your typical mowed lawn, but which is something else now: “C”.  Non-earth.  How do we landscape using an element that can be read, conceptually, as opposite to grass, to green, as we would perhaps in a figure-ground diagram of Planet Earth?  I say water.

EDA:  So, the sameness provided by “C”, reinforced by the ring of cypresses that I assume has as its center the center of the grassy area we’re on right now, achieves the goal that every room has the same view.  And these rooms are in turn equal as requested, sharing both size and shape.

Architect (IWAPRAR):  Yes. 

EDA:  Wow, so… so let’s shift gears a little.  How do you feel about tonight’s award?

Architect (IWAPRAR):  I’ll just go ahead and quote Farson on this one: “Contrary to what most people believe, giving awards is not a benign activity.  The weight of psychological research on this subject shows clearly that extrinsic rewards are ultimately demotivating, not just because there are always a lot more losers than there are winners, but the pursuit of awards paradoxically distracts people from the work itself.  Genuine awards, the kind that lead to further innovation, are always intrinsic to the process of the work.”

EDA:  Interesting.  Is that the reason why you didn’t attend tonight’s award ceremony?

Architect (IWAPRAR):  No.

EDA:  Would you agree that the house looks like a cross between a pueblo mansion, a turn-of-the-century suburban corporate headquarter and a minimalist desert Transformer, transforming?

Architect (IWAPRAR):  Autobot or Decepticon?

EDA:  Decepticon.

Architect (IWAPRAR):  Yes.  But let’s take aesthetics out of the equation for a second.  Tell me.  Do you.. like the house?

EDA:  Yes I do, actually.

Architect (IWAPRAR):  Super.  So, what do you like, about the house?

EDA:  There’s less beige in it that in the rest of Arizona?  No, the equalization of the spaces designated to each of the main domestic program emphasizes use itself as well as interior distribution as providers of identity over relative shape and/or size of enclosure.  This allows function over form to provide identity to each environment, while at the same time allowing for the equivalent experiencing of the practically equal views and shapes of the rooms to provide, via equiparation and uniformization, maybe a stronger overall identity of this house over others, signifying perhaps a novel and stronger take on the concept of 'home' for its users.  The Sepulvedas in this case of course.  To me, that’s interesting.  Would you say that's a good reading?

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Architect (IWAPRAR):  No, I would not say that that’s a good reading at all.  I’d say, maybe, that’s not such a terrible reading.

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EDA:  Well, there you go, people.  Award-winning architect (IWAPRAR) for you all.  Thank you again, sir, for your time this evening.

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Architect (IWAPRAR):  No problem at all, Miss Dugan.  You’re more than welcome.  More than welcome.