House as a container

Rem Koolhaas has considered the concept 'a house as a container' when design the Bordeaux hosue. This can be seen by the different types of containers used in his design of the house.

• Koolhaas has considered his use of materials to create envelopes that are visible from the exterior of the house. As you can see in the images of the house, the top level is clearly distiguished from the rest of the house because of its bold use of materials and geometric form. While the middle or ground level is almost considered invisible against its backdrop. These two form envelopes by there stark constrast of each other. These two levels are also split into to different areas when looking at wayfinding. The glass box in the middle is used as communal and public areas throught the house while the solid box on the top level is where the clients private and personal areas are located.
• The design also uses containers in the vertical sense, not only as horizonal envelops. There are 3 main vertical containers in the Bordeaux house. These can clearly be seen in the sections of the house. The first is the elevator shaft which has a sky light at the top and allows the Husband, who is wheelchair bound to revolve around all three floors. The second veritcal container runs just the top two floors and is more of a skylight for the top box of the house. The final vertical container is the spiraling staircase that runs through the three levels of the house.

These containers, first horizontal for private vs public areas and vertical, for transportation and viewing, help define how the Bordeaux hosue works in regards to waymaking and way finding. Koolhaas has done this very effectively in his desings.