Building Stories - Unit C - Instagram @buildingstories_studio

The Power of Stories can Transform the World - they bring us into contact with worlds unknown to us and open our eyes to possibilities not yet imagined. For us, as designers, compelling ways of telling tales are the tools we use to powerfully communicate our ideas and visions.

As architects we are storytelling dreamers, we imagine a building and then we will it into the present through our drawings, written words, spoken words, sketches and hand gestures, etc.

As a studio team, first we worked at the scale of a character in their room and then designed a home for the character (The Lexiconophilist). We then designed a public room for the character in Oxford which they may visit from time to time, which concluded with the design of a public building (The Oxonian).

Adrian Truta

Sem.1: Tale of the Oxonian Shepherd.

The Shepherd's home is designed for a shepherd with no sheep. Changing the relationships between inside-outside and public-private, it creates a deeper understanding of the self for the shepherd and accommodates his arrival in Oxford.

Sem.2: Tale of the Oxonian Shepherd.

Symbolizing the Rebirth of the crafts, the Shepherd's public building establishes a pilgrimage for wool-making and sheep. It creates a deeper understanding of society through learning and re-skilling, all the while telling a Shepherd's tale in Oxford.

Year 2

Avinash Bhattarai

A Home for a Stargazer:

This home is designed for someone who gazes at stars and loves watching the sky like it is a moving painting.

A Bar for Stargazers:

This bar is designed for those who love watching the sky, stars and the clouds. It is a bar experience connected to the atmosphere above us.  

Year 2

Amrita Bansal

The Potter’s Home:

A work-live home for a pottery artisan. The building itself is like a large scale hand-made piece of pottery.

A Pottery Archive:

An archive building for the storage and display of pottery.

Year 2

Fernando Duran

Free Will House:

The "Free Will House" focuses on creating a home that gives the inhabitant the freedom to decide. Four quadrangular shapes overlap to create an interior patio that lightens the house. Shutters and movable walls create shadows and different interior spaces.

The Flex:

The Flex intends to be a flexible space where people can interact and create different areas. The aim is to forge a place that makes the room perceptible and connects all our emotions to the architectural masses by the haptic sense.

Year 2

Georgie Harrison

A Scented Home:

 A home for a perfumer and his growing collection of the scents of Oxford.

Year 2

Hannah Slater

The Phlyarologist:

The tales of The Phlyarologist are true, a young man whose character is all upside down, a home which doesn’t make any sense and a brain all topsy-turvy.

The Marseum Placmus:

A museum of the lost and forgotten everyday objects, viewed and displayed in a large portmanteau. This public building has a twist on some ordinary buildings (market and museum) and is designed to be quirky on the outside and inside.

Year 2

Hissah Almousa

Algae House:

This project aims to create a lively experience that uses algae as a living plant on the exterior façade of the building. The house does not only function as a living space for the scientist Adam but also as an educational experience for the public.

Year 2

Kaifi Kashaf Haque

Panorama, a Home for an Astronaut:

The house was designed to be sustainable yet connected to the site. The interior is designed in a minimalistic way as per the need of an astronaut.

Peregrinate:

This public building has a theatre and exhibition hall and has been designed as a journey. There is a transition in the ambiance and materiality and all five of our senses are used in the architecture.  

Year 2

Keny Patel

The Puppeteer’s Home:

At the end of Combe road is an ordinary home occupied by an ordinary therapist…or is it all a meticulously designed façade? Many people visit her but not everyone makes it out, only the therapist knows what’s hidden within the layers of her home.

The Puppeteer’s Café:

The puppeteer's hobby takes physical form with this café. As each unique room plays with the visitors’ minds, emotions and movements, transforming them into puppets being controlled by the spaces she has created. This time she is watching the show.

Year 2

Olivia Ferrero

The Mystical Cottage:

Inspired by the word Lignatile meaning living or growing on wood, this home design is for a pixie-like character nestled within Oxford.

The Growing Library:

In a city of many libraries, this new Oxford public building is The Growing Library. Plants and wildlife are embedded within the public building. The building grows and changes every season while the library grows with an increasing number of books.

Year 2

Oliver Ng

UNTIL DAWN: Cain, a vampire lives in the dark. The house is specifically to help Cain for finding the golden fleece; it is designed in a way so that can prevent direct daylight throughout the day.

THE EVIL WITHIN: As the name suggests, vampires hiding inside human beings, hereby the library designed to contain to operate 24/7 for both vampires and humans. To reduce the conflicts between the two users, the library separated into two mirrored parts.

Year 2

Paulina Skrzypaszek

Beyond the Worlds:

An interpretation of a house for a science-fiction writer. Atypical house for an atypical personality. The writer is a loner and prefers to stay indoors enjoying his private space, but still wants to be a part of the outside world.

 
Into the Unknown, Sci-Fi Museum:

An interactive museum for people of any age to experience and discover. Every room challenges and surprises enhancing the experience. The public building provides a space for leisure, artificial intelligence, astronomy, culture, education, history, art and science-fiction.

Year 2

Anna Deligianni

Flow-State:

A house / studio for a photographer and DJ in Jericho, Oxford. It offers a balance between a private area where Thalia, the photographer and resident of the house can live, and a semi-public studio space and darkroom where she works and hosts events.

Vessel:

A public exhibition space for the Visual Arts that interacts with the contrast between shadow and light to create a unique experience for the users. It seeks to offer a different and new free-for-all space in Oxford, while supporting local visual artists and photographers.

Year 3

Charlotte Webb

The Pigeon House:

Olive’s home is a sanctuary to the many pigeons that populate the city and she uses them to stir outrage in her neighbours through her controversial and provocative articles within the Sleazenation magazine.

Anarchists in the Basement:

The public building houses magazine’s offices that sit under the series of public debating chambers that allow the public to witness the creation of the media below them, responding to the increasingly polarised nature of our global media.

Year 3

Lou Feliu

 The Airgonaut:

This project consisted of designing a home for a fictional character. I designed a house for Mary Sadler, a hot air balloonist living in Oxford from the family of the first hot air balloonist in England; James Sadler.

The Sadler Gallery:

The Sadler Gallery is a public building celebrating the first hot air balloonist to fly in England: James Sadler. It is located on Rose Lane next to the Botanical Gardens built in 1621 and opposite to the Merton fields, where James Sadler took off on his hot air balloon for the first time in 1784.

Year 3

Gabe Edyvean-Heard

A Charcoal Kiln Home:

On the site of a once bustling charcoal wharf, the home has a curvi-linear structure which acts as arteries to the charcoal kiln, the beating heart of the project. The smoke created will be used for fortune-telling and for meditation.

The Augurist and the Apothecary:

The Herbal Apothecary aims to introduce its visitors to the power of natural ailments. Herbs are grown onsite through aeroponic towers and dried on large drying racks, then used to make essential oils, tea and to fortune-tell with the tea leaves.

Year 3

Iman Danial Azuan

 A House for a Detective:

The house for Detective Charles is sandwiched between two ordinary shop lots and hidden in plain sight with hidden spaces within it to help shelter the wrongly accused, until proven not guilty.

Jericho’s Rehabilitation Centre for Depression:

This design for a rehabilitation centre uses the five senses of touch, smell, hearing, taste, and sight. The project has three main spaces that each play a role to help with mental healing. One of the spaces is a Rain Hall.

Year 3

Lucy Monk

Home for an Introvert:

This is a home where sounds were isolated and transported around the house via speaking tubes. My character could then hear sounds both in and outside her home, which she could record and integrate within her musical performances.

A Journey through Sound:

A building containing spaces with different acoustic properties inspired by systems our bodies use to process and produce sound. The sounds of Oxford are collected and are combined with musical sounds and user’s reactions and are projected onto the castle Mount.

Year 3

Mariam Elsaghir

A Home for an Opera Singer:

This home is a tower with two singing areas; one for singing to Oxford across the rooftops and the other is a space for private singing for the opera singer.

An Acoustic Experience:

This public building is an acoustic experience with three main spaces; two acoustic halls and one performance hall. Each space is made of different materials to create different acoustic experiences.

Year 3

Sharvaree Shirode

Wine in the Basement:

Miss H is the modern day reality of Miss Havisham. Her home is inspired by the clock hand geometries of the time ‘twenty to eight’, the time she was jilted at the altar, accommodating for all her wine needs and comforts. 

The Oxford Banquet-ery:

The Banquet-ery brings the vineyard to the city. The public building hosts banquets for weddings and educating on the winemaking process. It emulates the character of Miss H, decaying glamorously with time.

Year 3

Summer Derbyshire

A Home of Living and Sleeping Dreams:

The film maker Mr Murpurgo's home is a space to dream. Projection within and outside the home is used to explore dreamlike ideas and worlds, extraordinary experiences for passers-by and experimentation for the occupant.

The Everdream Theatre:

A modern informative theatre that presents the stories behind the stories of Oxford, allowing its visitors to learn how to see the beauty of Oxford through the eyes of dreamers- as anyone can dream, they just need the right inspiration!

Year 3

Telma Ferraris

Bridging Gradients:

A home for engaging with the community about politics and to detach from the concerns that it brings to be a human being. A connecting house, in gradients (of public and private) and for the gradients (diversity of people in society).

Healing Botanic Centre:

Pairing Oxford’s Botanic Garden and its medicinal plants with a building to heal the soul. Welcoming everyone, it includes rooms for various forms of healing. From quiet meditative pods to halls for human connection. The textures, sounds and atmospheres will soothe the soul.

Year 3