|
Since
high school, for my own amusement I've drawn pencil sketches of
plans, playing with the challenge of working out the geometry.
Here is one category: dwellings,
including spirals, mirror effects, and movable walls and floors that
quickly convert bedrooms into extra living space.
My
oldest design actually dates to junior high: a two-story
circular house. I've appended those sketches to a description
of a Henry Ford Museum exhibit. But let's move on to more
radical ideas.
|
Suppose
that each floor of a large warehouse, 120 feet by 160 feet long, is
to be remodeled into 24 one-bedroom apartments of about 625 square
feet each.
Allowing
for hallways, we could divide each floor into 25-foot-square
apartments (gold diagram). But a third of them will end up in
the interior of the building with no windows.
Can
the apartments be long and narrow (blue diagram)? Can they be
53 feet long so that they reach the hallway running down the middle
of the building, but just 12 feet wide so that they take up as little
of the precious exterior wall as possible? This becomes more
important if the warehouse is even longer than 160 feet. |
 |
|
 |
Here's
what a 12-foot-wide apartment might look like.
It's
essentially a hallway between the interior door (at the top) and the
exterior patio (at the bottom).
On
the left side are tables and shelves.
On
the right are the appliances, including the bathroom; a bed, which
can be concealed by a curtain; and a seating area.
There's
little room for furniture other than the basics and the built-in storage.
Although
this arrangement would work, I must admit that personally I'd
probably prefer to live in the 25-foot-square apartment.
Provided that I got one that had windows. |
|
|
