Archetype Research - the MOBIUS HOUSE

GENERAL INFORMATION

Location: Het Gooi, Amsterdam, Holland

Architect: UNSTUDIO (Van Berkel and Bos)

“A house that would be acknowledged as a reference for the renovation of the architectural language.” Dutch architect Ben van Berkel requested to design a house for a young couple In 1993. The clients requested a building in which they both could live and work from home and therefore to spend more time with their children. They also looked for an intense relationship with the landscape, as their two distinctive professions, and needed separate studios for working, but the living space would be shared.  They desired complete isolation while they worked, but with the opportunity for natural encounters. (Stories of houses, 2006).

CONCEPT

The design team sought analogies for their conception of the program—a steady, continuous flow from activity to activity—and settled on the idea of the Mobius strip.  The Mobius strip is a mathematical model whose one continuous side appears to be two sides that twist around each other. 

In order to walk along a face of a Mobius band, it is expected to have more than one loop around the ring before coming back to the starting point. “Other" faces of the prismatic structure will be visited in the procedure. Such a structure may be built with a proper gathering of cubes.

MOBIUS HOUSE AS AN ENVIRONMENTAL FILTER

Site is located on Het Gooi a residential area near Amsterdam, a peninsula between two rivers encircled by beech trees and with a strip of grass in the middle (Wordpress, 2009). In order to complete a landscape of the area with the river, and get appropriate amounts of sunlight, Van Berkel placed Mobius House on top of the slope with a north-south orientation. Repeating large glass windows were adopted to create a feeling of outdoors, and therefore, clients can enjoy the view of the river from any of the two studios, major bed rooms and the public area within the house. The Mobius house design was shaped twisted belts are working as Mobius flat surfaces. These flat Mobius surfaces are treated as walls, ceilings, and floors that are interlinking inside spaces, with surrounding exterior, creating a spatial twist throughout the house.

Van Berkel and Bos said ‘Taking full advantage of its location, the house unfolds horizontally, allowing the occupants to take in the surrounding during their daily activities’ (Bradbury, 2009).

MOBIUS HOUSE AS A CONTAINER OF ACTIVITIES

Other than structure, circulation is another essence of the Mobius concept for the house design. As requested by the client, they both could live and work from home, needed separate studios for working, but the living space would be shared. Movement through this concrete loop traces the pattern of one's day activities. Arranged over in three levels, the loop includes two studies (one on either side of the house for the respective professions), three bedrooms, a meeting room and kitchen, storage and living room and a greenhouse on the top, all intertwined during a complex voyage in time. (Stories of houses, 2006).

A diagram was used during the design of the Mobius house to describe “the organization of two intertwining paths, which trace how two people can live together, yet apart, meeting at certain points, which become shared spaces.  The idea of two entities following their own paths while sharing certain moments, possibly also reversing roles at certain points, is extended to include the materialization of the building and its construction”. The program became about how the two people would move through the twenty-four hour day. (Jacobo, 2004).

MOBIUS HOUSE AS A DELIGHTFUL EXPERIENCE

The design of the Mobius house fully satisfy the clients’ expectation and living style, rational space arrangement that separates private areas from public spaces. Interpret the concept of the Mobius stripe, in the circulation and structure to form the spaces of the house. And as from the beginning of this page, the Mobius house is “A house that would be acknowledged as a reference for the renovation of the architectural language.”

The perception of movement is reinforced by the changing positions of the two main materials used for the house, glass and concrete, which overlap each other and switch places. As the loop turns inside out, the exterior concrete shell becomes interior furniture - such as tables and stairs - and the glass facades turn into inside partition walls. (Stories of houses, 2006).
The contortions and twists in the house go beyond the mathematical diagram. They refer to a movement that has moulded a new way of life as a consequence of using electronic devices at work. Ben van Berkel has managed to give an additional meaning to the diagram of the Möbius band, where its new symbolic value - characterised by the blurred limits between working and living - corresponds to the clients' way of life. (Stories of houses, 2006).

Reference:
 

Baunetz. N.d. Ben van Berkel/UN Studio. http://www.baunetz.de/talk/crystal/pdf/en/talk19.pdf (accessed March 12, 2011)

Pressg5. 2009. Mobius House. http://pressg5.net/zFactor/wp content/uploads/2009/03/mobius_house.pdf (accessed March 12, 2011)

Stories of Houses. 2006. Mobius House. http://storiesofhouses.blogspot.com/2006/09/mbius-house-in-amsterdam-by-ben-van.html (accessed March 12, 2011)

Wordpress. 2009. “Mobius House” Netherlands 1999. http://utasraymondlaikimho.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/mobius-house-netherlands-1999-ben-van-berkel-un-studio/(accessed March 12, 2011)