Envisioned for a 25 acre rural site, the home has a ground floor level and other mezzanine level, at 214 square meter (2,300 square feet). The ground level is sunken 41 centimetres into the ground. The floor is ringed by a concrete bench, and the interior show us a raw aesthetic. Structural elements are left exposed, including the plywood ceiling and masonry walls. There are second-level annex spaces, comprising a lofted bedroom over the first-floor bathrooms and a netted rumpus space strewn with pillows.
The project proposes a structue with nine-square grid organizing four plywood trusses resting atop eight cinder block walls, separated by stretches of glass.
The project proposes a structue with nine-square grid organizing four plywood trusses resting atop eight cinder block walls, separated by stretches of glass.
"The House of the Woodland employs a form of the nine-square grid, establishing a dialogue with the reoccurring use of this organisational typology throughout architectural history," the studio said in a project description.
Although perceived as an abstract exercise, the Nine Square Grid was in fact imbued with principles derived from both architecture and painting: structure, composition, and spatial arrangement as well as light, depth, and circulation. John Hejduk developed this teaching approach in the 1950s. To get his students thinking about architectural space, Hejduk required them to design a house using a nine-square grid. An exhibition about Hejduk's approach was staged at Harvard University in 2016.
The spatial reasoning based on abstract forms and their part-to-whole relations became the Nine Square Grid’s most influential pedagogical heritage. As the villas by architect Andrea Palladio, in 16th-century, making use of the nine-square organisational device. The plan was also employed by Louis Kahn designing Exteter Library, built in 1972, and by Shigeru Ban for his Nine Square Grid House, completed in 1997.
