Introduction
"I always start with squares", said Louis Kahn. A quick look at the floors of some of his most famous buildings, from the bathrooms of Jewish Community Center in Trenton, the National Assembly of Bangladesh will be enough to confirm this observation. Sometimes the whole building is a square (the Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Exeter, New Hampshire), but more often the project is configured as a cluster of squares (the towers of the Richards Medical Research Building in Philadelphia , Pa.).
Situation
The Fisher house is built on the outskirts of Hatboro, Pennsylvania State, USA.
Concept
The Fisher House is the simplest expression of Kahn’s idea: two cubes, one dedicated to the living room (served space) and a second one containing the other the bedrooms (serving space). These two cubes merge on an angle apparently by chance, like dice thrown on a table. In fact, they are not perfect cubes and the "cube" containing the living room is not even square in plan, but they are both close enough to be perceived as such.
Description
As in the Esherick House, ventilation is provided by windows with wooden shutters profoundly retarded considering the façade plane, so that these will not excel when they are open.
Windows
The most complex aspect of the facade is the disposition of the windows, which have large glazed areas juxtaposed with smaller deep inbounds that contain smaller windows. This leads to an abstract geometry, which also reveals inside the house with items such as a bank window with an intricate composition in the living room.
For Kahn, space and light were the same thing, and orientation, a precise art. The lounge area overlooks the north and the river, through an elaborate window in a corner that incorporates some tailor-made furniture.
A few smaller windows located in the northwest and southwest facades balance the light entrance and help to soften the glare, allowing the occasional entry of sunshine rays in the afternoon.
Spaces
Outside
The exterior is pretty special, two cubic volumes, one of them placed at 45 degrees toward the other, with a slight connection between the two of them that creates a dynamic configuration.
In a similar manner to the extent of the Yale University Art Gallery, the Fisher's house uses a narrow wooden horizontal line on the facades to show the start of the second floor.
A few yards from the main building two small apartments had been erected and are used as stocks.
Interior
· Hall
The fact that the living area is located in a separate block is an example of another very characteristic preference of Kahn’s. He did not like the buildings in a unified manner, so he divided the interior space in order to create usable spaces. Ideally, Kahn wanted each space, or room, having his own way. In a large building achieving this wasn’t practical nor economical, but a private home allowed him to get closer to the ideal.
The only volume area orthogonally located is the stone fireplace in the living room, reiterating the 45-degree angle from the adjacent volume.
· Dining
The dining room, located behind the fireplace, was originally going to be a bit dark and isolated, with only a small window, but Kahn’s clients insisted that they wanted to have a view to the outside, which lead to a larger window being introduced a few months after the house was completed.
· Kitchen
The living room fills an entire floor completely, although it shares that same space with the kitchen. This is because the kitchens is treated as an autonomous objet, also shaped as a cube, which lives within the living room. The living room flows on and around the kitchen.
· Bedrooms
In the two floors block maintaining the formal integrity of each space became more of a challenge and had to be subdivided. However, each new space is coherent with the house concept. For example, theTWO BEDROOMShttps://cdncache-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png on the upper level and oriented to the east are two (almost) perfect squares, each taking a quarter of the total floor area.
The house also has a lobby at the main entrance, two bathrooms, one on each floor, a toilet, a dressing room and a basement - storage.
Structure
The house stands on a platform, built with a wooden grid on which to hold the main beams that support the upper floors.
To adapt to the slight inclination of the terrain, Kahn gave the house a stone base that compensates the slope and generates a lower level overlooking the garden.