Kenneth Woods - Architecture Masters Thesis 2015

The House as an Architectural Testbed My thesis investigation started with research into spatiality, with no specific intent in terms of building typology, function, location, or user. By applying a specific function, I was able to explore a more deliberate spatiality and its potentials. After considering a number of possibilities, I chose to explore the effects of spatiality on dwelling, and the single-family house. The ‘house’ has been one of the classic typologies over the past few hundreds years that architects could test new theories on. It is also the most well known and banal of all architectural typologies, and therefore gives one the chance to challenge preconceived notions of how we live. The small size of a dwelling easily masks the amount of detail, intricacy, and pure effort that goes into making an interesting contemporary house.

To ensure that the object was not a standard suburban house, I infused the typology with a number of functions that would add nonstandard architectural elements into the design: a studio, gallery, and cafe.

20