RIAS Challenging the Housing Crisis, 2020

The outdoor room is not the same as a balcony: it consists of two generous spaces – at least 10² metres – read as one space, equivalent to the front and rear yard of the terraced house, providing an important threshold accessible from the main entrance, the kitchen and the main bedroom. They are essentially covered loggias, rather than balconies or open terraces, and so offer more potential in the ways that they could be used by tenants.

Outdoor rooms are a safe play space, workout place, growing space. A place to relax in privacy or with friends, mend and store the bike, hang the washing, to grow vegetables or flowers, smoke a cigarette, to store muddy boots or indulge in messy or a little boisterous activity, and for the domestic pet. They are even capable of becoming a landscape if the occupant has the time and desire to create it.

They can be protected from wind and rain by using perforated horticultural netting (40%) or glass louvres to the north, or extended with an open balcony to the south. They could even be enclosed if desired. The entry to the apartment leads through the front outdoor room, and directly off it is the apartment’s main storage area. The rear outdoor room adjoins the bedroom(s), bathroom and washing machine. The entire outdoor area can be overlooked by parents to supervise young children playing outside.

The outdoor room is an integral part of the building’s dynamic design in terms of energy use, the building envelope, the microclimate within the dwelling and its spatial feeling. Our design approach acknowledges the changing seasons, and above all the natural psychology and behaviour of the occupants.

Designing for all the senses

Although at the time the physiological and neurological links between our senses, our well-being, green spaces, and the buildings we inhabit were just beginning to be established, we formulated our thinking and design upon a fundamental regard for all the human senses to arrive at an integrated proposition which was fundamentally about the quality of habitat.

Our engagement with architecture is multi-sensory:  our bodies measure qualities of matter, space and scale with our eyes, ears, nose, skin, skeleton and muscle. Even the eye collaborates with the other senses. Yet few architects appear to consciously design to engage with all the senses. The visual sense – aesthetic – is usually of primary consideration for the designer but is only part of total design. The primacy of the tactile realm in our embodied experience of architecture underscores its importance as an ingredient in bringing architecture to life. Materials and surfaces have a language of their own, and materials in themselves have particular tactile qualities, but it is also through shape and surface texture that tactility can be expressed: buildings feel “friendly” if they can be caressed.

Another aspect of hapticity is feeling the air on our skin. As we are discovering, being able to feel the caress of a gentle breeze while remaining within the territory of our private home is vital to our physical and mental health. Good quality air is vital, and air movement is inextricably linked to comfort: the transfer of sound, smell, warmth and coolth, and humidity.