Assignment 1 - Equus

Client -
In order to begin the design process of the ‘House of the Inhabitant who refused to Participate’, the character/client's needs and wants must be well understood and established. Jadon; a magistrate, has been recently divorced and is looking for a house that is designed for solitary living, but can also accommodate for his children when they come to visit. An organised design is essential as his work requirements extend to his home life and therefore, he needs flexible space that can be used for both work and pleasure.

Design 1

The first design relied heavily on geometric shapes and the idea of the orderly being open and enclosed spaces which you immediately associate with an activity.

Design 2 

From this design, I decided that the next design I would incorporate the strong geometry with a soft curved wall that carries throughout one side of the house. This is the ‘tower’ component and holds the mirror on the top of the wall.

Design 3

My third design took a more organic approach and focussed more on his passion and hobby than his regimented work. The design still displays the geometry of design 1 and 2 but in a very different way. There is a flow through the house and a natural progression between the spaces.

Design 4
The fourth design really incorporates elements from all three of the previous designs and has been dealt with from a different perspective. I wanted this design to be on a different scale to the others with much more confined, intimate spaces with lower ceilings.

 All four designs have elements of both parts of Jadon’s life and incorporate these in different ways. The way the geometry has been treated in each design serves a different purpose but represents the same thing; his organised lifestyle.

Horse Latitude - Character

Character - magistrate – office of the magistrate

mag·is·trate   [maj-uh-streyt, -strit]
noun
1. a civil officer charged with the administration of the law.
2. a minor judicial officer, as a justice of the peace or the judge of a police court, having jurisdiction to try minor criminal cases and to conduct preliminary examinations of persons charged with serious crimes.

Jadon Samson is a 43 year-old middle aged man living a monotonous lifestyle - day in, day out. All through his life he has been the respectful, trustworthy man the public eye sees him to be, but behind the court of law he has an adventurous side that he must explore. He is an outgoing, sociable man with big dreams for the future. The hearings of misdemeanors and pretrial hearings for serious crimes get tedious and he finds his outlet dreaming of scuba diving - the tropical fish, the discovery of species and the luminescent coral take him to a place he loves.

Jadon grew up in a typical Australian family in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. His childhood consisted of travelling with his family all over Australia - his favourite place to visit was Queensland as it meant he could go snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. His father had a passion for all water activities and this was a huge part of Jadon's upbringing. From water skiing, to snorkeling - they were all loved by the whole family. He always dreamt of travelling out of Australia to explore more snorkeling and diving locations around the world and eventually moving away to one of these places where the tourism was high and scuba diving was a regular activity; somewhere like Fiji. He gained his scuba diving license at the age of 19 and followed his dreams of travelling to tropical islands where he fell in love with the lifestyle. 

His parents continued to tell him he needed a secure job here in Australia, but he couldn't ignore his passion for the beach lifestyle. Eventually he decided that maybe the scuba diving could wait, and attended the University of Melbourne to study Law (his parent’s suggestion). Achieving high grades and excelling in the course, he decided that this was the path he would take and it would fund his obsession with all things diving. Jadon met a lovely English lady called Ruby who was also studying law and soon after they finished their degrees together, they married. After practicing law for 6 years; they decided it was time to start a family - 3 children later their life had become completely family orientated. Their home life was chaotic and messy as both Jadon and Ruby have such busy public lives. The opportunity came about for Jadon to become a magistrate of the Magistrates' Court of Victoria which he took, with the advice of his wife and family.

This new position created many problems within his family; no time spent with his children or wife and having a life of work meant his mind was always somewhere else. His wife was losing hope in his ability to balance work and private life; and began to doubt their marriage. The children were suffering and Ruby had got to the point of no return - divorce. Jadon was left single with 3 confused children wondering what had happened. The divorce changed Jadon as a person. He had lost all interest in anything - including his job and scuba diving. After many endless months of argument over the house, money and children Jadon was looking for a new beginning; a new house that could not only accommodate his children on the days that he saw them but also something that was appropriate for solitary living. He wants to no longer be living in what was, but what could be in his future.