I introduced the luxury space in this blog post
here last week. As my ideas have changed, I have recently discovered a well-known architect-
Peter Zumthor. I took a page from his book in designing this space, which is focused on the luxury of travel.
I love to travel, but being a student for most of my life, I haven't had the opportunity to do it as much as I would like. The funny thing about luxury, whether it's something material or intangible, is that it is usually something you cannot always have. A little out of your reach. Or, in some cases, a lot out of your reach.
This space explores the idea of feeling like you have traveled to the beach without actually having to travel to the beach. I tried to capture the anticipation you feel when you first get to the beach, drop your bags, and all you want to do is get to the water. You can hear the ocean, smell the ocean and you may even get a glimpse of the ocean, but it is all build up until you have finally climbed over that last dune and the endless horizon line is staring back at you, inviting you to be a part of something bigger than yourself.
In my space I tried to accomplish those same feelings- the experience of walking into the place and knowing there is something special awaiting.
Let me walk you through my space. When you first walk in you are on a platform, but all you can see is the partition in front of you. There is a piece of glass (window) that runs around the entire 20'x20' space, allowing light in. Since you are elevated, that glass piece happens to be at your feet, so there is light coming from below, but you can't see where it is coming from. You can hear the water trickling in the space and you can smell it. You turn right and walk down some stairs and as you walk down the stairs, the glass horizontal piece in the room becomes eye level and you catch a glimpse of the wall across the room, which happens to have water trickling down the whole wall, but you still don't know what is in the space.
As you get to the bottom of the stairs, you can finally peak around the partition wall and you are able to see the entire space as a whole.
The wall across the room is a rain wall. As water falls down the wall it gathers along the sides of the room like little channels running between the wall and the floor. In the center of the room is a heated pool. The level of the pool water is the same as the level of the channels running along the edge of the room, so the floor feels like it is floating. A little oasis :)
Okay, so they say in school that we can express much more in a drawing than we can with words. And after that rambling above, I'm starting to believe them. I was able to pick my medium this time so...you guessed it- watercolor! This was my final presentation (if posted they would be 11"x17" running side by side like a panarama.
So now I want to know what is luxury to you? How would you represent that in a space? Leave a comment!
