Design Principles Pod
Architecture. A hot topic, a buzz word, a realm for the rich and famous, or the thing that your step uncle does? We will be unpacking the good, the bad and the downright reality of the architectural and construction industry. With insights from industry professionals and personal anecdotes from our three hosts Ben, Gerard and Sam, you will be given a look behind the closed pages of those fancy looking moleskins. Tune in and redline out.
Design Principles Pod
Form and Function: Exploring Programme in Design
Ever wondered what architects mean when they talk about "programme"? In our latest deep dive, we crack open this fundamental concept that shapes everything from the tiniest apartments to sprawling civic buildings.
This episode begins with a seemingly simple question: what exactly is program in architecture? We explore how program operates simultaneously at multiple scales—a house within a street, a road within a city—creating nested relationships that influence design decisions. Through examples like OMA's Seattle Library with its stacked functional boxes unified by a faceted glass facade, we see perhaps the most literal translation of program to architectural form.
The conversation weaves through bubble diagrams (an early design tool), form following function (or is it the other way around?), and experimental approaches that challenge conventional spatial definitions. Gerard shares several fascinating concepts including his "advent calendar house" where floor hatches reveal different functional spaces beneath. We discuss how regulatory constraints and client expectations often limit such experimentation, particularly in residential contexts, while highlighting how program innovation frequently emerges most powerfully in constrained circumstances like tiny houses.
What makes this exploration particularly valuable is recognizing that program isn't just a technical exercise but a powerful design driver. By thinking creatively about how spaces function, relate, and transform, architects can create more compelling environments without relying solely on expensive materials or dramatic forms. Whether you're designing your own space or simply curious about how buildings work, understanding program reveals architecture's deeper purpose: creating meaningful human experiences through thoughtful spatial relationships.
Listen now and you'll never look at a building the same way again. Have you encountered spaces with particularly brilliant programming? We'd love to hear about your experiences in the comments!
Chapters:
- 0:00 - Introduction to Understanding Program
- 9:42 - Defining Program: Bubble Diagrams & Form
- 19:46 - Program as Architecture: Notable Examples
- 29:55 - Form Follows Function: Design Approaches
- 39:54 - Reinventing Walls: Alternative Spatial Definitions
- 48:05 - Program Innovation: Experimental Dwellings
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This week's episode is brought to you by Parrot Dog, limited release 28. A hazy DIPA programmed with crush, strata and citra hops. Prominent tropical and stone fruit hop characters give way to a super soft mouthfeel and low bitterness Juicy, bubbly and nice. This week we've cracked into the vault and pulled up an episode that we've recorded at the end of last year. Thought we'd lost this one, but seems like we've managed to retrieve it and bring it to you guys this week, super excited about this one. We discuss program form and function and all things in between. So sit down, get your bubble diagrams ready and let's crack it welcome back.
Speaker 2:Hello, this is gerard. Here was a design principles podcast and today we're endeavoring to talk about program. What is program? It's very architectural term. We like to throw around weird terms that nobody else understands and that we're still trying to understand ourselves. So here we go. I sort of think program is uh, it's not some. Uh, it's kind of like your bubble diagram, I guess, if you're in the design process, your rooms and stuff. But then as you change scale, I think that relationship moves as well. So a house is a program to a street, within the street. It's part of the program of a street. Road is a part of the program of a city. What do you guys reckon?
Speaker 1:I sort of pegged it down to well. Well, firstly, how do you spell it? M-e or no M-E at the end?
Speaker 2:I'll be honest, I don't know when to use either of those.
Speaker 3:American version is M-E in the end in English.
Speaker 1:Isn't it the other way around?
Speaker 3:No, I don't think so. I think the American is P-R-O-G-R-A-M-M.
Speaker 1:This is a debate we're having.
Speaker 3:I've Googled it before.
Speaker 1:I'm all about program-y, Program-y are you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I weirdly, when I'm writing a program sort of like a Gantt chart type program, I weirdly use P-R-O-T-R-A-M-E-M-E but I definitely prefer the short version.
Speaker 1:Anyway, sorry, I digress, I just always. It's always bothered me because I don't think there's a right answer. Gerard, you pretty much I think you pretty much nailed what it is in a nutshell.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've sort of got All right done Podcast over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly I thought about six points here of what like program includes and what program looks to address.
Speaker 2:Six steps to programming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's like purpose and functionality, spatial requirements, the user's experience, technical requirements, aesthetic preference and then regulatory constraints. And so it's how all of those things impact each other and how really the functional requirement is probably the the biggest driver and turn affects all the the other things around it yeah, um, I think some good examples of how I kind of see the program is OMA's Seattle Library.
Speaker 2:Do you guys remember that one? It's kind of like boxes stacked on top of each other and then just like a big glass facade that blends them all together. But I just started off with these real basic masses. The top box is headquarters, then the next one's books, then assembly, then's books, then assembly, then staff, then parking and then the facade just like wiggles between them. All right, I think that to me is like a, a wow, a real strong form driver from program, so splitting the building up. But then I guess that one's interesting because it's got all these in-between spaces between the boxes, which is probably the public space.
Speaker 1:It's quite a literal transformation of program to form really, though, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah super literal which I guess might happen lots in architecture school, or you know, you might think it would happen lots in architecture school but probably doesn't actually happen very often in life, which probably makes it a pretty interesting building to encounter. Which kind of comes back to the point of why I wanted to talk about program, because I think it's such a useful tool and, as a design driver, kind of trick you into using different forms, definitely in that OMA scenario, without that diagram you'd never come up with that shape of building.
Speaker 1:Do you guys on that diagram idea, when you guys are designing in the very early stages, do you still bubble diagram?
Speaker 3:I did it the other day, actually after our initial programming discussion, I was like, yes, this is something I need to experiment with a little bit more, but you still haven't made any models. Pulled out the bubble diagrams and the models are coming soon. Models are coming soon. They're coming soon, but I found the bubble diagramming very useful, though it was just like an easy way to start to organize some spaces.
Speaker 1:I really enjoy it because it's so fast. And to your point, gerard, on influencing form, you might start with a bunch of separated bubbles with each programmatic or each functional requirement that's given to you by the client. So let's say that might be kitchen, living, public, private, open, closed, whatever they may be, or it may be as simple as individual rooms. It might be three bedrooms. You have three bubbles for bedrooms or bathrooms, whatever however your arrangement is. But you start with those all separated and then you start to mesh them together and stack them on top of each other and how you envision them into linking. I find it really helpful to work through that process of moving the bubbles around and then connecting them with arrows. How you see that into of the transitional spaces, yeah, is that something that you guys do?
Speaker 3:yeah, definitely, and the same with the inside versus the outside and yeah, as gerard was saying before, like to a different scale, so the house versus the street, or yeah, I think that's all very, very useful.
Speaker 1:So, pro, pro bubble diagram interestingly, I haven't really thought about bringing in the like wider context program into like the bubble diagram. So it's definitely something like a tool to a technique or a tool to to look to implement, because I quite often as well, in terms of scale, I'll initially start with my let's, let's say, 10 fingers, 10 bubbles, but then and they're all the same size, but as you sort of start to nut out the priority of each one of those functional requirements, the bubbles will increase or decrease in size. You know, you might have a three or four little bubbles which are are utility bathrooms maybe, and then you might have one massive bubble which is like a key space, be that a bedroom or be that the kitchen, living, dining or be that whatever. And I find that quite useful for then starting to arrange a plan and space and understand the scale of spaces beside each other as well.
Speaker 3:Well, I just went ahead and scaled the bubbles to roughly how many square meters that space needs to be. But going back to your larger scale stuff, because we do like more development type, so when you're using it for like in a development, it's really important to know, like, how each building is going to be interacting with each other, as well as what's happening within that building itself. Yeah, so that's probably why we, you know and incorporate, like the streetscape and that sort of thing a little bit more. Yeah, controversial.
Speaker 2:I don't tend to use the bubble diagram.
Speaker 1:Really the program man? Yeah, I thought you'd be a huge proponent for the bubble diagram.
Speaker 2:I'm doing the closest thing to the bubble diagram on a project at the moment where we're dealing with stricter size requirements. But usually I'm very loose. Make it up. Yeah, it's hard to post-rationalize my design process. I'm kind of always balancing literal program with architectural intent and sometimes, like I said I mentioned before, design as program. Maybe I am down that angle a bit more.
Speaker 2:So previous job I was kind of struggling to get it to work until I found a sort of a conceptual driver which was like birds in the bush, because it's a bush site and it's a very complex little lot of program. So I didn't want to like end up creating something quite monolithic or too regular in a bush setting. So I wanted something sort of scattered through, keep trying to maintain like the beauty of being in the bush. So I kind of landed on turning the buildings into birds and then then they're not allowed to like birds don't really stand in line unless they're on a power line. I guess that kind of like started to drive my would-be double diagram. So I guess I was kind of designing outside in in that scenario. But I think I change my technique every time so we don't really have a consistent technique to the design.
Speaker 1:It's chaos so would you say you follow like a more of a, to use, you know, the Louis Sullivan maxim more of a form follows function approach? Or would you say you're the opposite? Or would you say it's project specific, because for me, I think I'm probably more of a form follows function direction is the way that my design evolves.
Speaker 2:I try to achieve both ideally. So I don't think I, I don't know. I kind of refuse to believe you can't have form and function. Surely Maybe that's just me? No, I'm not saying that.
Speaker 1:But it's more like what comes first in your approach, like is it the chicken or is it the egg?
Speaker 2:you know, yeah, I don't know. It's definitely different each time. I think the thing that is consistent is that I try to find a unique take on each project. This is like architecture so long and you spend so long. It's like a really long-term relationship. An architecture project it's pretty committing. I want to spend that sort of engaging in an interesting idea or a theme every project. I try to have something kind of unique in there, whether it's making birds as buildings like mum's place is a big courtyard but then you have to go outside to get from living to the bedroom, based on a quote I found, I think, from some old Olsen-Kundig yarn about how it's good for you to go outside. So sometimes it might just be a theme like that is probably where the design is, but then it's always like meshed in with trying to make shit affordable, what your budget is, and then that might simplify your building down to a box, and then so simply just conclating forms just diving a little bit deeper on that building.
Speaker 3:My buildings are birds concept. How do you create the program? Because obviously it sounds like you're creating the forms which are, you know, based on various bird types, but then how do you actually create the, the program of the building?
Speaker 2:so those ones have quite specific program. So the well. I guess from the bush aspect the program is a bird From the external aspect, but as the internal program, one of them is a med center, one of them is like social services. There's various other relatable spaces, but how are you designing the program? So with the med center, it's with the medical clinic, so they have quite a strict program. So, yeah, it's very back and forth between what they want and what they have.
Speaker 1:So we our last meeting I had archicad I've been with them which actually worked out amazingly through this process, are you coming up with a form and then a conceptual form or a conceptual direction and then making program fit, or are you creating the program in an outline of how you may want to create the form and then sort of draping the form over it for want of a better term or molding the form to it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a mixture of those two. Okay, because it's such a strict program, it needs to work properly, but then I need it to work properly from my architectural direction as well. So, playing with the architecture, I see it as right in the middle of like form follows function and function follows form. So it's really don't see the compromise there.
Speaker 1:Because it's interesting. You know that project that you talked about, there's a Seattle library. You know that's very much a program generated form, where you've got your program and, for want of a Seattle library, you know that's very much a program generated form, where you've got your program and, for want of a better term, you've stacked all of these bubbles, all these blocks, and you've basically like draped a cloth over the top of them and that has created your building, whereas something like Leibschkin's Jewish Museum to me that's very much formally driven and then program has been made to fit within it and that's sort of forced. This like strong tension and juxtaposition of space, isn't?
Speaker 2:that Holocaust Museum very linear layout, so like that does work really well for the exhibition because it is a progression of spaces. From my understanding, having never been there, it is.
Speaker 1:It is like that, but when you're in it it doesn't feel like that, and I don't know if the intention was to create a chaotic sense. But there's order to the chaos, but it seems driven by chaos.
Speaker 2:First, if you know what I mean. Yeah, well, I think, because he's got like purposely put beams across spaces and stuff, like to create that feeling of chaos, because he's telling a pretty strong area. I think both those examples could be argued the other way as well. The Seattle Library is such a unique form that maybe that's using the argument of program to validate form as architecture. Yeah, I think. Just some of those old school quotes.
Speaker 2:A bit black and white, a bit black and white. Yeah, both of those examples, I think, are pretty good examples of awesome form and awesome program, like meshing in a really cohesive, successful way, whereas if we listen to too many of the old boys who like to boil life down into one sentence, let's make new quotes yeah, form one sentence, let's make new quotes yeah, form and function, let's go for it.
Speaker 1:Do you know the classic and this is a slight digression, but a classic program? Program influences form. I don't know how much you guys know about city planning of Wellington. The city was first designed in the UK but for the hut, and they arrived here and the land was too boggy, it was too swampy, and they're like, oh, we can't build a city here, so we'll put it on the harder, better surface material on the other side of the harbour and it was better sheltered from the weather and things like that. Well, they thought it was, but they didn't really change the city design. They sort of just dropped it over the wellington landscape. So you went from flat site to an incredibly hilly site and which is why we have so many weird twisted streets because they had to take this very regular city plan and make it fit an incredibly irregular site, which I find like just so hilarious yeah, it's also worked out fairly well in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 2:I'll always get places like Hamilton, which is like a grid for as far as the eye can see it.
Speaker 1:I mean it's created a very dynamic city. Some people would say frustrating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, learning the roads around Mount Vicar took me a little bit back in the day, I think, to push the program thing a little bit further. Like I think, like there's interesting way to define space through the use of program, like I think we're. Something I think about sometimes is how in love with the wall we are, for obvious reasons, a wall, solid, easy, nice, predictable object. But like there's, you can kind of use program in a way to define space without walls or like I think the sana project, the rolex learning center, is a big kind of almost loose topography. It's like a blanket of a building but she's used like a rolling hill to like define the space. So I think you go over the hill and then so it's a massive building, so it's like you walk over the hill and that defines one space from the other.
Speaker 2:I think relationships of like, yeah, how we define spaces, stuff that I find super interesting, love to experiment with in the future. Yeah, another one's like holtrop and holtrop's got a um apartment concept which is just like a like if you drop the paint on the ground it's like a big wiggly, splatter sort of shape and there's no doors. I think you just walk down these long hallways and then around the corner, then you gain the privacy for a bedroom or something. So it's like these weirder ways of defining your space, but lead to an interesting space.
Speaker 3:You can definitely tell when you're in a space that has absolutely nailed the program.
Speaker 1:Do you know, what's quite interesting is all of these examples that we're talking about here are larger civic buildings or commercial buildings or education facilities or whatever, like libraries, museums, all this sort of stuff. Less so so far, that we've discussed anyway things like housing or maybe retail or hospitality or anything like. Do you think that there's the same I mean, I, I totally think that there's the same opportunity to be able to approach program and specifically what we're talking about here at the moment, sort of the removal of the wall in these areas. But do you think that's a harder battle, given, you know, the slightly more defined programmatic spaces that you're required to interlink?
Speaker 2:Talking, about privacy.
Speaker 1:Talking about privacy, taking a shit, bedrooms, you know, whatever, be that to your own housemates, family, neighbours, whatever, equally. Take hospitality, for example, the front of house to back of house relationship, and whether that's an open relationship or not, things like that. Equally retail changing facilities and all that sort of thing. It'd be really interesting to see, or if any listeners or if you guys have any examples that sort of fit, that same mold of of removing the wall or or challenging the conventions of program, I guess, and in those sort of buildings that have a far more standard, I guess, or regimented programmatic scheme I did a cafe in newtown frank's frank's in newtown which we kind of like opened the back of house.
Speaker 2:So the concept was that kind of exposed back of house a little bit, and then, with the idea that it makes people feel welcome and part of the space, and then we put seats sort of on the end, each end of the bench. Some of these things have kind of been taken over and there's there's no longer any seats on the end of the bench. It was a little bit too small. But the yeah, I'm not sure how successful it was because, like the, you got the sterilizer and kitchen kind of exposed to some of the back tables and you got to walk past it.
Speaker 2:But the design like relied on a very clean, yeah, cafe, yeah, and we antsed over like all the storage space and like we're like all right, we've got, we've done this to death, we've got storage for everything. Everything has its place. But if you go into frank's new town now it's kind of like chaotic and there's bags of beans and shit piled up against the wall, like another fridge up against the wall. So it's like if, if it's not maintained at like a how it was intended, it wasn't going to work.
Speaker 1:And I kind of feel like I totally know exactly what you mean and I sort of think the same from a residential point of view. I love the idea of the wall-less house but say, for instance, you've got somebody in the home, that's an intense snorer Kind of want to be able to lock that person away or other noisy activities which you know. Use your imagination. But you know there's the, there's the design concept. You know that we have and and sort of that I that maybe idealistic view on how a space may be used or designed to be used or whatever. But in reality you know, is it or or can it be successful? And I, like gerard the honest, your honesty, and that you know you've tried, you tried this thing and really you know, ultimately it wasn't successful, maybe not necessarily wasn't successful as a, as a space I mean, frank's is still a cool cafe but you know, like you're not true to your original design intent and yeah, I think sometimes we can.
Speaker 1:We can often get lost in our concepts and then reality strikes and it can quite often bring a project down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that cafe actually was the last time I was very thorough about a bubble diagram. Right, me and Luke Melhop designed that together and we drew a bubble diagram and we're like colored in the bubble diagram. We're like, hey, this is kind of cool, let's just build this. So if you go to Frank's everything's circular, so it's like A literal bubble diagram. It's like so it's literally. Very literal, an extrusion of a bubble diagram Love it.
Speaker 3:That kind of reminds me of, you know, when you basically you put a new lawn down and you need to put some sort of pathway in, but you just let people use the lawn, walk over the lawn naturally until tracks occur, and then you're like, okay, cool, that's the most efficient place to put the pathway. How much of the program should actually you, you know, happen organically or naturally?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's an interesting point and this kind of comes back to our conversation last week on material. You know, how far can you push the extreme of a concept and I like that idea, ben of. Could you almost have a building that's completely naked and over the time but it has an intended use, whatever that may be, and, over time, the way that people interact and use it. Say, you have a test period of 18 months or something and then that will drive the final outcome. That could be quite. It'd be a really cool idea. Test that test.
Speaker 2:Is that the Kanegawa Institute? Oh, ishigami's building of trees. Beside his big swoopy outside building he's got a I think it's a workshop, part of a workshop, but it's just a giant open room made with like a thousand columns basically all tiny little miniature columns and there's no, no program in there. It's just like full open space and people kind of inhabit it how they will. So, like his renders versus like what it's like now. When you see videos like kevin from Kevin from Archie Marathon, how his video of that space came out a few days after our talk Cool, yeah, you should have a look at that video. People have just put tables and benches everywhere.
Speaker 1:But the columns were still. The columns, I guess, have still influenced the space to a degree. It would be interesting if they were. You know, this is pie in the sky concepts, but if they were movable and as people use the space it shifted and moved to more, you know, like it's shifting sand dune almost yeah, those columns were based on a forest so they're all very irregular.
Speaker 2:So there's a forest. It's a very conceptual forest ultimately. But yeah, how much can you direct people? Kere Barn did a house. I think it was called Picture Frame House. It's like a big empty shed basically, and then the bedrooms are little boxes on wheels and then you can kind of push your boxes around. That would be a real interesting project to do like a post-occupancy review, so like has it been used as intended or have the boxes been pushed into one location and that's where they will remain? Yeah, that was an interesting project that came out when I was tutoring with girl Megan Storm.
Speaker 2:We did a topography house. It's based on the idea of a landscape inside a building. I guess an extreme version of the Sarno project roll at centre, you go over hills and that is your differentiation of space. I think the bathroom was like in the ground. So you try to tackle these issues. I just think there's there's space in the world for like the super exciting conceptual projects, but maybe on like a like a tree hotel sort of aspect a tree hotel where they build weird wacky buildings but then ultimately they're on Airbnb or something. It'd be kind of a cool thing for people to explore. We build outrageous buildings and then people can come and experience them, because it would be hard to live with a family in a room in a house. That's just a skate park essentially.
Speaker 1:Exactly right, and I think you've hit the nail on the head, is that it takes a special type of client or a special type of function or use to be able to explore this sort of thing. Like you said, having a family home with this kind of crazy concept is, in reality, not going to probably get across the line you might present it to the clients. Odds on, it's going to be a hard sell.
Speaker 2:Yeah architecture is often a hard sell. Response is still like your client's attitude to risk how adventurous they are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it'd be nice.
Speaker 1:I mean, this is a discussion that we want to have at another time.
Speaker 1:But you know, I think this sort of extreme not even extreme, but just more conceptual push of the idea of program is definitely like, applicable to the realm of competition as well, and I think there's not enough, because there's no fear like in competition.
Speaker 1:There's no fear like not fear, but there's like no, there's no risk or there's no sort of negative out, potential negative outcome other than not winning the competition, but it's not a loss because you still learn so much in the process. But you know, I think there's not enough competition in architecture, in all aspects commercial, civic, you know, even residential um, and then obviously the purely conceptual. But I think, you know, competition is definitely somewhere where you could start to come, come up with these brilliant ideas. And the thing is people aren't going to know what they like until they've presented it. And you might surprise yourself, but I'd say and personally, like so often, you know, nervous too or fearful to kind of really push a crazy, particularly programmatic concept um, because you don't want to do a shitload of work and it'll be rejected and you have to redo it yeah, that that's.
Speaker 2:I think the competition thing could be a antidote to New Zealand's sort of benign built environment, uninspiring public architecture just uninspiring everything, yeah asking Kevin about what houses in New Zealand he would come and visit. It's not really only residential, isn't it?
Speaker 1:like that's the only but that's the crazy thing. I mean, we do housing. We do do housing really well. It's beautiful, you know, but we do bespoke housing very well. I'd say the vast majority of our housing is pretty damn average.
Speaker 2:We don't have any Seattle libraries. I think that's competitions. I think you're far more likely to receive some interesting proposals via competition.
Speaker 1:In a world where design speaks louder than words, what story does your space tell? At Autex Acoustics, they believe great design is more than aesthetics. Every product they create strikes a perfect balance between form, function and sustainability, made to enhance how a space sounds, looks and feels. From using recycled materials to pioneering carbon negative wool, their commitment is to help you shape environments that inspire people and respect the planet. Explore the future of acoustics design at autexacousticsconz. So, other than the wool, gerard, I mean we sort of talked about reinventing the concept of the wall. I mean, have you looked at any other aspects of a? Or there's more standard aspects of a building that you could look?
Speaker 2:to reinvent. I think there's a lot more to the wall as well. There's a varying degree there, like whether you like lots of you said curtains being used a bit architecturally, like maybe more internationally, like to define like a lounge, nook or something. Maybe that's the retractable. Maybe if you had a big ceiling grid, giant grid, foot by foot or something, and then you have this multi configurable curtain space, you can reconfigure your house as you wish. I just think how we define the spaces I think are what I find really interesting.
Speaker 2:Even down to some people do more of the camping style where you have a series of buildings and a canopy and then you kind of remember. I can't remember the house, but I think Kirsten showed that in one of her lectures back in the day. She did it at architecture school. That's kind of based on tenting, so I think that one had external access to different spaces.
Speaker 1:Sort of each individual program's its own building and they're enveloped in this canopy or enveloped in a roof form.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which you could really push. You could push that really hard.
Speaker 1:I've thought about that concept quite a few times and I love the idea, and then every actually for my own house. But then every time I come back to it I'm like shit, that's a lot of external cladding work, which means a lot of this, but it's also when it's your own money that matters a lot yeah, part out, but also probably allow you to stage a project quite totally and potentially.
Speaker 1:You know. You know, even with the, you know with the changes, you know, if that 60 square meter granny flat type rule comes in you know what are you looking at there you could you build an entire house sans consent. Almost that's something you know. At some point you tie it all together. But that'd be a really interesting sort of approach as well and that kind of comes back to that original, those sort of six points of program that I talked about. That's almost a way. There's almost a program in itself.
Speaker 3:You know the way that you approach a build like that everything is program everything is program and some of those like tight apartment complexes where you know you've got like multi-functional spaces. Your apartment's like three meters wide by I don't know like say six or eight meters, but you've got to squeeze in, you know, a kitchen, a bed, a living space, and so it's configured in such a way that you can kind of like shift things around, move walls and reconfigure it.
Speaker 1:I think tiny houses are a great you know, well understood, well, relatively well understood example of that. You know, everything in a tiny house has a multiple function. You can't afford when you're working with such a tight program. You can't afford for something to have single use Every floor is a bed and every wall is a cupboard or you know, whatever that may be and I quite like that multi-use aspect. You know, I sit here just looking around and in the studio down here and, like you know, there's four walls with winsome windows. You know, but, like the walls, the function of the walls is purely a wall. They're not doing and you can hang arvin or whatever on them, but that's it. It's doing nothing else and I like that idea of it having a having a higher purpose those small space projects like what's?
Speaker 2:what's the old saying, the lack of maximum parameters kind of breed interesting outcomes, totally the transformer spaces.
Speaker 1:You kind of always end up with some interesting quirky or takes on things I wonder if that's just because you've got you know it's a smaller thing to sort of comprehend and so you've got space to be more creative and more you know it's. It's a more of a craftsman approach than say you know you're not gonna well, unless you've got an insane budget. You know your level of craftsmanship on like a 700 square metre home is not going to be anywhere near the level of craftsmanship that you as a designer is able to put in, or the builder even is able to put into a 60 square metre home Dependent on budget.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. Anything can be done with unlimited funds and time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those Queenstown builds take three years for a reason.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I designed this container house idea back in the day, which was the idea was that you flip a container on its end, so it's like sticking up like a tower and then you suspend all the program from the ceiling. Rather than going to the bedroom, you bring the bedroom to you, so you're interchanging your program into the same space, push it back up and then you pull down the kitchen bench and then do your kitchen and then you push it back up. The bathroom, however, was on the side of the of the tower you wouldn't want to be pushing that back up.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's not that keen on a bucket, you know.
Speaker 1:I mean, gerard, you've sort of talked to us. Maybe you don't want to give away any of your trade secrets, but you've sort of I mean, that's such an awesome way of reinventing program. You've sort of talked about other ones, like the advent calendar type idea as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that that was um came out the back of the uni project as well, the at uni. The idea was that I was farming design ideas for my next 10 years. Recommend everyone to go tutor university students for a semester. I think Get some inspiration. You get a lot out of it.
Speaker 2:Like just the freedom of thinking at uni is you try to comprehend it. You're like, oh yeah, I can come up, I can think of crazy ideas. But when you're just in a room of people that are actively, because you set the parameters, as I did in that scenario, so you can you can kind of direct the focus on what you're thinking about. So that whole course for me was in program. So we were actively trying to come up with new program ideas without relying strictly on the walls.
Speaker 2:So it's like when you go down the old Sunkundag route of moving things around with pulleys and cables, or like the Sana route of moving over hills. This other one was sort of like an advent calendar. So I just like the idea of like a very crisp conceptual space, big empty room, and then there's just a series of hatches in the floor. So you lift up a hatch and there's all your bedroom, your bed and maybe a rack of clothes on the side, another one, there's a bathtub or there's a kitchen in the other one. So then you're like stepping down 900 mil or whatever as an experiential space. I think it's pretty amazing to be able to pack your house away and then you have this big hall for parties.
Speaker 1:I was going to argue. You know that comes back to that classic you come up with the idea, but the user experience is quite different. I could see someone being like, oh, this is so fucking annoying and just leaving it open all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like if you're, that's the prerogative of the user, I guess.
Speaker 1:That's your December 20.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be chaos. Or you just like push, or you just sweep all the shit into, like into one of the empty.
Speaker 1:Do you just have a? Do you have like a rubbish pit room?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, what else you got hidden in those dungeons?
Speaker 2:Underneath it pit room. Yeah, yeah, what else you got hidden in those?
Speaker 1:dungeons. Yeah, underneath it's a giant funnel and it goes to a big rail strip. That that is a good, good idea. Those like underground rubbish removal facilities. I think they've got them on one of the islands I can't remember what island and it is in new york but like, yeah, you put all your rubbish into like a rubbish hatch, it goes down into like a collection chamber and shoots it off island.
Speaker 2:One of the islands in the Hudson. It's pretty cool One of those for people. Yeah, I've got to go to work or get my work towel.
Speaker 1:That's the Jetsons, isn't it? Yeah, the Jetsons. Yeah, that's a good point, ben. How much do you think programming has evolved, or has it really?
Speaker 3:Well, how much do you think regulatory constraints affect program? Is that why it's easy to have like a obvious change in program and more commercial commercial realms?
Speaker 1:but I also think it comes back and we've said this a few times it comes back to the client's appetite for something different. And I'd say that so many people are black and white that they don't. You know, they don't really see. You know they come to you and they go okay, we want a three-bedroom house, and in their head it looks like every other three-bedroom house. You know, in terms of the program, every space is individual. You know you're going to take a special kind of client to come to you being like I'm totally open to anything. Build me a, you know, build me a an advent calendar home. So I think it's probably more not that we can't don't have these ideas, but I think it's more the ability to implement them than being a regulatory constraint.
Speaker 2:I don't think you can sit back and wait for somebody to come to you and ask for that type of architecture. You have to push that upon people, or the concept client engagement phase You've got to. You know, see what they actually want.
Speaker 3:I feel like a true architect is.
Speaker 1:You will accept this idea. I don't care what you like.
Speaker 3:Architect slash Jedi. You will like. This is what you want, this is why I.
Speaker 2:This is why I.
Speaker 1:This is good architecture yeah yeah, I mean, what do you think, ben? Do you think that the regulatory framework does restrict our program? Because I don't. I mean, it's not like the building code or you know anything like that's out there saying that you have to have separated bedroom spaces and you have to have walls. You know, other than obviously structural requirement or whatever, but to a degree, obviously, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like it's not, it's not saying it's not saying like these are the programmatic requirements you have to meet. So I think, I think we we've caught ourselves in thinking that it does, but it doesn't really. I think we've caught ourselves in thinking that it does, but it doesn't really.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's what we perceive as comfortable spaces these days. You know, as much as I love the idea of the advent calendar, house and that sort of thing day to day, I'm not sure if it's going to be the most practical way of living.
Speaker 1:How do you like getting up in the middle of the night, super dusty, and you have to like open a hatch to find your toilet and you open the wrong hatch and then you're like, fuck this house you hope you fall into the couch, not the kitchen.
Speaker 3:What about the dishes in there, though? You gotta clean the kitchen properly. I'm way too lazy for that, way too lazy, although, yeah, if it had that whole recycling rubbish, uh situation going on, then make life a bit easier. I think, like for me it's more basic, it's around what's happening on the site, you know, whether orientation, garden landscaping, all of that sort of thing, as opposed to having, like, a big open space and more of a dynamic built environment. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm still. I'm still working through it, still working through it.
Speaker 2:I'm still learning we're pushing the uh boat all the way there. You boat all the way to the end. At this point, For context, the advent calendar at the moment is drawn as an A-frame in its current iteration for a bit of land on my own land. So you've got to test these ideas on yourself. But that's sort of cross-programmed with the idea of a sort of chapel, like a wedding venue, A frame that's sort of falling down a hill. So it's got to introduce another element. It's got a sloped floor, Ridges, you know level, Got a small triangle at the top and then big triangle at the bottom and a truncated apron. So on the slope you then have the hatches as well. So then down at the bottom there's a little kick out and then a little waterfall into a kitchen. The current iteration has sort of two layers of hatches, so the top layer is like the chapel. So then that turns into stairs.
Speaker 2:So it turns into a normal terraced space. But then when those are down you lift up a bigger hatch and that's like your bedroom or desk. But this is like the part the you know. The base use is like a. It's a ski house, ski hut, book a batch, so it's not like a full-on house. But this one does have a bathroom off to the side.
Speaker 3:Bathroom, toilet and a hatch. You can choose to squat at floor level or walk down into a toilet.
Speaker 2:This one's got a whole room off the side with a mega window and a big view out to the bush.
Speaker 3:When can we expect that to be finished? Construction A million years. Who knows. What are some other unique programs that you've come up with. I'm feeling inspired. Maybe I need to get more creative.
Speaker 2:There's this other hotel in Norway I think it was part of the Ex Machina, some robot, ai, robot movie. There's a series of houses in the bush, but they're kind of like just regular versions of Holtrop's kind of finger idea. So they're kind of like wiggly rooms, that like offshoot, so you have, rather than doors, you have kind of like a bend in the room. But again, these are like single unit things, where you go around the corner and then there's the bed down the end and it's got like a big window and tree. So like, yeah, it planned, you've got some more regular wiggles and then it sort of moves around these trees and stuff as well.
Speaker 1:Don't have to chop anything down we've talked a lot about, like the maybe not extreme but you know very intensive take on reinventing program, but being kind of it'd be interesting to get your take, particularly in the realm that you work in, you know a bit more of that medium density development stuff and how you can influence sort of the generic program in that and a project that kind of springs to mind is Block Party by Spacecraft. If you think about a standard homes program and then they've just pulled out aspects of that that can be very public and then made that shared, that's how that's influenced the spaces and it's meant that you can. They've been able to bundle a lot of program and a lot of usable space into a small site, because not every home needs to have their own outdoor patio why can't all six homes share it? And not every home needs a laundry why can't they all share it?
Speaker 2:co-housing is probably pretty tricky.
Speaker 1:As a product, though, definitely a realm, for you know. For a more interesting use of program though, yeah it definitely is.
Speaker 3:The problem is then you've got the resource consent program. Basically is a program, so you've got it basically defines, you know, outlooks, it defines outdoor spaces and then like traffic and a whole bunch of other things that come into play, and you've got to kind of pull it all together in a way that makes sense for each building as well as so they're working together as well as working as individual spaces. So that's why the diagrammatic approach works quite well, because you can actually get a lot of those outlooks in there and in the garden spaces your minimum requirement and then kind of work around that. But that's what I was talking about before. Like that's kind of like a mediocre way of designing in comparison to what gerard's talking about, which I would absolutely like love to be able to incorporate more of.
Speaker 1:But I guess that's what the you know the argument and the success of a project like Block Party is is that it's a simple shift in program that you know probably still easily meets regulatory constraints. But all it took was that like one step. You know we don't have to take 10 steps to make a difference and make a more interesting space. I guess what I'm coming at is like that one step can be enough to create something that's quite unique.
Speaker 3:That worked well because that was a group of people slash friends that came together to build a single product, I guess in a way. So that works really well.
Speaker 1:But if you're looking to like, if you're looking to say, better implement, a better understand program in your own work. I guess what I'm getting at is you don't necessarily have to run straight away, you know, you don't have to take this huge conceptual jump or or shift in your work. I mean, it can be something quite simple that can have quite a big impact.
Speaker 3:I just want to shout out to the those block party guys I like the older I get this is a little bit of a segue, but the older I get, the more I'm like how epic would it be to just like live with all your mates on one street? I don't know, everything just seems like it would be so much more interesting. Maybe that's what society should actually like band together people in places as opposed to working around jobs and that sort of thing. So it's like okay, cool, those hundred people get along with each other and those hundred people get along with each other, and as I basically like setting out like a wedding or something like that. So all of a sudden, you're surrounded by people that you really like and, at the very worst, people that are like pretty cool, you know, in the outer rims a little bit more, you know. So everyone's happy, right, everyone's happy.
Speaker 1:That could be a pretty divisive society, though. Set up some factions, jesus, yeah, you're getting pretty. Maybe have a culling every couple of years. Yeah, it's getting questionable here, ben.
Speaker 2:Sounds like a hunger crisis.
Speaker 3:That's what I'm talking about. That's much more interesting.
Speaker 2:But the underlying thought of thinking about program at a city scale, I think is important though I've never heard somebody, I guess, explain co-housing in that sort of way, which is a lot more compelling. And, yeah, we're gonna do all our recycling and save the planet, whereas get to live with my mates and, you know, hang out, that's good time. Yeah, I think we're. We're projecting here with a lot of these ideas of outrageous pushing the boundary on things, but I think it's just good to design in a way that you're thinking about how your program is operating. It's just another good tool to have in your tool belt.
Speaker 1:If you're looking to create impact in a space, rather than putting a real flash material on, do you just shift up how the space functions like sometimes they can be more impactful than spending lots of money on marvel or something totally, and I think that that's the bottom line really and you know, I guess that's our, that's what we're looking to appeal to listeners and other designers out there and you know some people are amazing at it, but you know there's equally a huge amount that aren't. Just consider program a bit more. Probably I'm out.
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