Architects: Wish to have your task featured? Showcase your work by uploading tasks to Architizer and register for our inspirational newsletters.
Just recently, a buddy of mine brought me a 5 × 5 poster from the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, filled with red human figures enthusiastically engaging with one another. At the center, a single figure looks outside, stating in a speech bubble: “I like individuals, but they make me very worn out.”
Lots of architectural dialogues are focused around connection, openness and social exchange, advocating how structures must act as locations of gathering. Still, a large portion of the human population long for privacy and privacy as much as interaction and contact. To put it merely, think less open-plan lofts and more “inadvertently missed you in the passage” by style spaces. Below are 7 jobs that, purposefully or not, feel completely calibrated for introverts, exceptionally developed to keep interactions … optional.
Usually, design intent operates in binaries: the project will either be immensely public or painfully private. Yet introversion as an idea may not have to do with preventing people altogether but rather building spaces where, if anyone faces someone, it is totally on their own terms.
Casa Mi
By Daluz Gonzalez Architekten, Zürich, Switzerland
Jury Winner, Private Home (L 3000-5000 sq ft), 8th A+A wards
Upon very first look, the residence provides two contrasting architectural faces. The street-facing elevation stays extremely shy, specified by a closed shell of gently pigmented concrete that shields the interior from the surrounding community. In contrast, the elevation dealing with the lake stays kindly open, taking advantage of the breathtaking view. This duality extends inwards, where the interior oscillates in between tight, spatial pockets and larger circulation paths, developing depth, movement and purposely adjusting the numerous levels of personal privacy.
Maggie’s Gartnavel
By OMA, Glasgow, United Kingdom
Maggie’s centers are naturally shy, emotionally supporting cancer clients and their friends and families and serving as protected social environments. The specific project redefines this introversion not as seclusion however as a managed retreat. Unfolding around an internal yard, the building turns inwards, shielding the occupants from the institutional context of the neighboring health center. Albeit the interior is consisted of fluid social areas, its casual L-shape develops differing layers of privacy that move from intimate spaces to more open common areas. In its totality, the structure embodies a form of “social introversion,” providing sanctuary, discretion and emotional comfort without completely pulling away from community.
Attic Repair
By Clavel Arquitectos, Murcia, Spain
This attic refurbishment responds to its instant, dense metropolitan context. Instead of using enclosure as a spatial tool to build privacy conditions, it reimagines introversion through fragmentation. The existing perimeter of the structure is negated, changed by a series of “habitable bubbles” that host primary living functions. This design, in turn, creates a series of informal flow areas that act as ambiguous limits in between functions. The specific spatial strategy is even more extended to orient the relationship between the exterior and interior spaces, eventually constructing a shy environment that emerges through methodical dispersions and controlled proximity.
The flying box, Upper level extension
By Myrto Kiourti, Athens, Greece
The flying box is no typical house. Located within the thick metropolitan fabric of Athens, this reinterpretation of the traditional” panosikoma “changes a familiar domestic typology into an architecture of deliberate introversion. Particularly, the house functions as an arbitrator in between the intergenerational stress that take place among all the inhabitants in the plot. The outer shell operates less as an exterior and more as a protective limit, shielding the clients (a young couple) from the city and the immediate familial context listed below. Your home unfolds around embedded yards, producing a personal micro-world that withstands direct exposure.
Daeyang Gallery and House
By Steven Holl Architects, Seoul, South Korea
Albeit transparent and quite illuminative, this personal gallery and residence runs at the edge in between enclosure and openness. The spaces are tangled, adjoined through complex gestures and architectural volumes and the general structure is consisted of three distinct pavilions that increase from a unified base. Comparable to the previous tasks, the building deals with inwards towards a shallow swimming pool of water that interrupts (and unifies) the three areas, turning introversion into a condition expressed through light, proportion and motion.
Krkonose Mountains Centre for Environmental Education
By Petr Hajek Architekti, Vrchlabí, Czech Republic
The particular project”hides” from its context. Half of the structure exists within the earth, mimicing the surrounding topography, where a series of angular airplanes pieces the overall structure. In parallel, a single-glazed exterior invites the passerby to peek through the camouflaged structure, managing its engagement with the immediate public landscape. In this sense, the task recommends a softer form of introversion, acting as a filter instead of a rigorous enclosure.
Sabater Home
By Fran Silvestre Arquitectos, Alicante, Spain
This Spanish house is, in essence, an area of blood circulation turned inside out. A lengthened, terraced system weaves in between the trees and yards, splitting your house in two: a façade facing the street that is deliberately closed and a secondary elevation that features purposeful openings towards the sea. Similarly to Krkonose Mountains Centre, the job embodies a nuanced introversion– one that interacts with the landscape rather of declining it.
Architects: Want to have your task included? Showcase your work by uploading jobs to Architizer and register for our inspirational newsletters.
Featured image: Casa Mi by Daluz Gonzalez Architekten, Zürich, Switzerland, Jury Winner, 8th A+A wards, Residential– Personal Home (L 3000-5000 sq feet)