Parallaxis

Although the principle victim of Modern architecture has been the city, its first victim was surely the garden. —Colin Rowe

What has hitherto most retarded the progress of taste, in buildings as well as in gardens, is the bad practice of catching the effect of the picture in the ground plan instead of catching the ground plan in the effect of the picture. —Marquis de Giradin

For many of its critics, the ‘problem of the plan’ lies with its tendency to dominate or override the potential of the elevation (i.e. the optical or embodied reception of architecture)—organisation without affect. Thus, a substantial portion of architectural inquiry has been devoted to strategies to ‘animate’ or subvert the plan-elevation relationship.

Here, a strong cross-axial plan organisation is reinforced  by the encroachment of four collective, ‘living room’ towers into the garden; yet, in the manner of Lutyens, these strong axes are subsequently undermined through the de-lamination of the circulation networks from the plan’s dominant structure. The rotational, peripatetic movement of the subject offsets the rigid, but stable, configuration. The turning of corners is emphasised over linear progression and static viewpoints. Within the unit, the placement of the kitchen disrupts the dominant axis, turning what would be a typical corridor plan into a spatial matrix.