Apartments

I've dreamed of living in a spanish/latino/italian palazzo-style apartments since I was just becoming a teenager. I have a history of dreaming in italian: when I was very young I worked with creative professionals in italian media, through the connections of my family. Their kindness even to strangers of at least some (less worried individuals), their love, and the intelligent, wordliness of every single one of them helped shape my expectations in life. The italian palazzos that are family homes are more like estates, complete with a courtyard in the middle. They are the type of place that could house 4 families or so, all in luxury, yet they were all one residence. The italian word, palazzo, although more commonly meaning hotel today, originally translated to english as palace. By the time the architectural idea had spread across europe to spain, they were no longer single estates: they were a conjoined series of buildings surrounding a central plaza. The size of whole city blocks, these places could easily house dozens of families. In the rest of europe, the central plaza evaporated over time. French palazzos are single rectangluar buildings, tending to be closer to the roman-style apartments. While in italy and more so (to my mind, at least) in spain/portugal, they became any building with a courtyard: U-shapes were more common. For residentials specifically, price and accessibility fought it out in the dawn of egalitarian enlightenment: single estates gave way to hotels, and for permanent residences, mini courtyards supporting only perhaps 6-12 families arrived on the scene. These simpler designs, requiring less capital, managed to transplant themselves in latin america as well: Panama city is the place that houses the ideal form of a palazzo currently in my head.

The first floor is entirely set aside for markets, while two or so floors above that are set aside for residences. The central plaza is allowed to be large enough to support the internal markets, and these become central sub-areas within a city.

With this in mind I have been thinking about apartments. But before I tackle this, I want to get up to speed doing floor plans again. So first I'm doing simple apartments: 7m x 14m (98m2).

Here is the blank for these floor plans. 98m2 7x14 blank

Using sketchup for casual architectural exploration

I have been designing, on and off (mostly off), architectural plans for ages. My first building was a skyscraper shaped like a chinese character - but since then my plans have been more humble residential ideas. And of course, none of it is professional. I've heard of a wet wall, but I've never built one. All of my foundations tend to be a 1/3rd m. of a cement, all the outer walls the same width. It doesn't matter if less would do -- even if I'm imaging glass -- it's still a 1/3rd of a meter!

Instead of worrying about build details like that, I worry about more functional concerns: how do you create an affordable modern design for the second world? How can I incorporate high ceilings and a mezzanine in a residence? More recently I've been wanting to design two different things: apartments for italian/hispanic palazzos, and indian single family residences centered around solar power and incorporated solar ovens. Ideas like these need a fast, fluid, easy to use tool - precision is less important when it's not meant to generate real blueprints - but all theb etter if that is an option too.

Towards these ends I've been using Google's Sketchup. Its a great concept and I love the software, even if, somehow, I always seem to find the bugs. These pages will showcase my explorations with Sketchup. Even though it will not be professional results, I hope there's something here for everyone to enjoy.