Home among right angles: cube living

Abstract

This article focuses on the dwellings of the Villa in Beroun in the Czech Republic, designed by HŠH Architects, and Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion, with architectural designs inspired by games, toys and creative play. The architectural designs inspired by the stacking blocks Lego®, K’nex® and Cidori® are explored and compared to GC Prostho by Kengo Kuma. The environmental implications of housing designs with malleable layouts, which reduce the need for constant changing and moving of houses throughout occupant lifetimes, are explored. The melding of the house and the game as a basis for rethinking the home space, which allows for rearranging walls and renewable capsular compartments, are analysed through the unsuccessful Nakagin Capsule Tower case study. The Villa in Beroun was dissected using gestalt psychology in order to unpack how the human mind reads its enveloping, malleable design. Due to its unique approach to black steel, concrete and glass material, the Villa in Beroun was analysed against new brutalist definitions.