Elemental

Ordos 32

source: Elemental

How to build this house?

Take black core bricks, brake them in halves, roughly (do not do it with care), and place their rough surface facing out to build the walls. This house should be as monolithic as possible, so these rough broken bricks, should be the outward texture of the whole volume, including roofs and exterior pavements.

The structure is based on walls and deep beams.

Straight floor to ceiling walls are made out of reinforced brick masonry. The perimeter walls also have a tied rough brick masonry toward the exterior.

Interior spaces are spanned by 1,6m. tall reinforced concrete beams supported by 2,1m. tall concrete walls.

Concrete slabs (about 15 to 20cm.) are mostly horizontal but diagonally sloped just around the tower.

The rough brick texture allows for relatively large tolerance levels, both on walls and roof. The roof shape is achieved by the accumulation of material rather than by following certain geometry. Rigid insulation has to be accumulated on top of the concrete slab as if it were sand or gravel. Then a wire mesh and a shotcrete layer will consolidate the shape (same as with grade pools construction technology)

Finally, regarding color, the interior of the project will be in matte black/white/grey gamut: Masonry walls painted white, sealed exposed concrete, black stained hard wood floors, black porcelain tiles (basement), grey tinted double paned glass in curtain walls and windows.