Inspiration...

As our site for Domus is in Kakadu, we have taken for our inspiration for this project Aboriginal rock art, which appears all over Kakadu. This rock art is often called 'x-ray art', as the images show the skeleton and organs inside the animals and people pictured. The idea was to come up with a design for a house which appears 'x-rayed'.



We came up with a concept in which the structure of the house was like a skeleton, with repetitive 'ribs' holding up the house, and wrapping around it. Our tutor andrew suggested we look at Santiago Calatrava's work. We looked up Calatrava's Milwaukee Art Museum (first image below) and found that his interior design really related to what we were thinking of...


these other images, from calatrava's science centre in valencia, spain, also portray the idea of the building's skeleton.


In order to make the 'skeleton' clear and dramatic, we are thinking of making the walls glass. Mies's Farnsworth house provided inspiration when it came to creating a plan for a house which was enclosed in glass, inparticular the way he articulated the utility block.