reinterpretation of the orthodox house7 of the time. The main façade of Koolhaas’s building directly references one of the ‘Five Points’; the long strip window or ‘fenêtre en longeur’ as Corbusier called it, running along the entire width of the upper level. The strip windows of the Villa Savoye surround the entire first floor in a continuous ribbon, framing the horizon but concealing the ground and the sky. This technique reinstates the villa’s detachment of its situation, within a large featureless site surrounded by trees, where it “sits on the grass like an object”.8 Although the Patiovilla is nestled onto a plot adjacent to other houses, Koolhaas’s appropriation of this element functions to frame the view towards the woodland as seen from the main living area, obscuring the road and other buildings in front of the house (Figure 5). The continuity of the strip windows around the Villa Savoye also adds complexity to the perception of interior and exterior spaces; it is only once inside the villa amongst the main living spaces that the internal/external relationship can be fully understood. Almost half of the area of the first floor is dedicated to the garden terrace; another of Corbusier’s ‘Five Points’ first realised in his contribution to the 1925 Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, in the Pavillon de l’Espirit Nouveau. The introduction of the element within the building’s volume introduces vast amounts of light and air and defines the radial organisation of the internal spaces (Figure 6). As suggested by its name, the Patiovilla references this secondary element, but rather than keeping the patio to the perimeter of the buildings volume, Koolhaas collages it directly into the heart of the first floor, essentially internalising an external volume into the main living area (Figure 7). Koolhaas’s patio is perhaps better understood in relation to Mies van der Rohe’s Court Houses (Figure 8). Over a period of nine years, Mies developed a series of autonomous projects based on the composition of a limited number of elements consisting of a roof plane supported on steel columns, floor to ceiling glass and interior walls within a walled courtyard.9 The houses featured one, two or three hierarchically sized 7
Le Corbusier, ‘Towards an architecture,’ Getty Research Institute, LA, 2007, p. 136.
8
Villa Savoye: A manifesto for modernity, Paris, Centre des Monuments Nationaux, 2009.
9
Roger Sherwood, ‘Modern Housing Prototypes,’ Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1978, p. 42.
11