Life is a precious, fragile thing. There are rare, quiet moments when this essence rises to consciousness and touches our hearts. During a breathtaking sunset. When children are playing without any sense of time or fear, fully embracing life. When birds welcome a new day in the fresh, quiet moment just before dawn.
Feeling life like this forces us to halt and be grateful. It makes us small because we fade away in the face of everything that surrounds us. Our experience of space and time is the foundation of all our motivation, our desires and hopes. It is what keeps us going, striving for a better life and future.
Citra’s designs aspire to create spaces that nurture a sense of belonging, connection, and security. By fostering these positive feelings, Citra’s environments aim to provide a foundation for moments of tranquility and well-being. When residents feel truly at home, they can more easily achieve the emotional and mental balance needed to succeed in life and appreciate its quiet joys.
Having a home that fosters gratitude, even amidst hardship, is the foundation of a peaceful life together. When we are grateful and at peace with what we have we can start trusting each other and working to create a brighter future together. A safe home where one can put the anger and fear to rest is the most natural way to empower every person to feel such gratitude.
Designing a home, especially an affordable home with a tightly limited budget is, therefore, the greatest and undoubtedly the ultimate challenge for any architect. It is the most difficult challenge, and it is the most impactful, because when successful it can change the lives of millions of people. Often, it is the small things that create this feeling of gratitude: Unique natural light during the day, the positioning and tone of the artificial light which is visible from the road at night, the proportion of a bedroom, the materials used in the kitchen or the position of windows and doors in relationship to the road and backyard.
In our quest to create such spaces for our residents, our design team at Citra meticulously examines everything: From the urban design down to the smallest detail. The design of the neighborhood should bring a balance between families and individuals from different walks of life so that they mutually inspire and build trust. A neighborhood should have public spaces where people can meet and share their ideas with the world, as well as private places where individuals can retreat when they need space for themselves. It should allow every person to express themselves without imposing their beliefs on others.
The design of the home in relationship to the neighborhood is crucial to its success. It influences how individuals and families feel towards their community. It can make or break the fabric that holds a neighborhood together. The orientation of a building, as well as the placement of windows and doors, should prioritize the impact on the neighborhood before optimizing for natural light, heat or sound. Although such technical elements play a key role in design, they should never take precedence over a home’s primary function in a neighborhood: Creating a healthy social fabric. This is especially true when designing affordable homes where space is limited and a strong reliance on the community is essential.
The floor plan of a home is fundamental to a healthy and fulfilling life. Often, the key lies in learning from classical and vernacular architecture and re-interpreting it into an affordable context: Bedrooms are the most private part of a home. Being in a bedroom should create a sense of being protected from the world. Sometimes, one even needs protection from the rest of the family, which in too many cases can be invasive and abusive. Bedrooms should be located as far away from the entrance door as possible and always need lockable doors. A well-positioned and designed bedroom is fundamental to healthy sleep, and only a rested body and mind can truly live a fulfilled life in the long run.
On the other hand, the kitchen is where many families spend most of their time together. It should be oriented towards the public road, allowing for a view of the entrance door and the street from the kitchen window. This makes the neighborhood safer due to the many eyes that are constantly on the road, and it improves the sense of security at home, knowing that someone is often present in the kitchen, shielding the private and vulnerable areas of the home from the world. Bathrooms should never be road facing, at least not on the ground floor. They are intimate, private spaces which should focus solely on fulfilling the sanitary and physical needs of the inhabitants. Corridors can be an important but often disregarded tool for creating distance, intimacy and protection. In affordable housing, where every square meter counts, corridors may seem like a luxury. Yet, if well-designed and positioned, corridors can be pivotal to a balanced house that becomes a home.
The height of rooms should be carefully considered. Following the ideas of Adolf Loos’ Raumplan and many vernacular designs, each room should have a room height that is as carefully considered as all other dimensions. Living rooms and kitchens benefit from generous room heights, creating a transition from the public life of the neighborhood and family to the private, intimate life in the bedrooms and bathrooms. In bedrooms and bathrooms, we are at our most vulnerable. We are often naked, both emotionally and physically, and somewhat close to how we were in our mother’s womb. Therefore, these rooms should enclose our bodies naturally without feeling claustrophobic. There should be a comfortable, organic and natural relationship between these rooms and our bodies and minds.
Especially in affordable housing, natural and mechanical ventilation are often completely disregarded in the design process. Yet, unhealthy living conditions are mostly caused by a lack of fresh air. Mold, dust mites, and a lack of oxygen cause numerous chronic illnesses which often go undiagnosed and hinder families, especially children, from developing to their fullest potential. Creating passive cross-ventilation throughout a home and mechanical air extraction in bathrooms and kitchens, the main sources of moisture, are simple and often inexpensive measures to ensure excellent air quality.
A lot has been written about natural light. Yet, modern architecture often disregards the need for privacy and intimacy. Too large openings are not only an issue in terms of thermal insulation and costs, but often contradict the fundamental function of a home: To create a space that is protected from all types of harm from the outer world. Creating good natural lightning conditions for an affordable home requires more than maximizing window areas. Each window needs to be carefully designed and positioned within a room to ensure natural light, privacy, surveillance of the outdoors and protection from intruders.
The same applies to artificial lightning. A careful balance between passive, atmospheric, indirect light and focal, decorative lights is decisive in creating a welcoming home at night. Artificial lightning also plays an important role in the relationship between a home and the neighborhood. While during the day, energy and atmosphere flow from the outside into the home, this is reversed at night. The warm light from homes illuminating the road often signals to people returning from a long day at work that they are about to cross the doorstep of their home and be welcomed by their family. It calms their minds and hearts and projects the love and care from within a home into the neighborhood.
A home does not only need to fulfill emotional needs. There are countless technical requirements that need to be fulfilled: Thermal insulation, sound insulation, waterproofing, storm, hail and earthquake resistance, bullet proofing and fire resistance. Most of these requirements can be traced back to the core function of a home: To shield the inhabitants from the outer world. It is important to not view this as something negative. Humans have always had deep respect for the forces of nature. The present, urban, young generation embraces nature, which is a healthy sign that humans constantly seek a balance between contrasting forces: Civilisation and nature, introversion and extroversion, creation and contemplation. Yet, the romanticized need for nature often associated with privileged urban middle and upper classes must never overshadow the need for protection from the forces of nature among the less privileged. Natural building materials such as timber, rammed earth, straw bail, or bamboo construction often do not provide sufficient protection from the elements for underprivileged families. Design must focus on the real needs and emotions of the user without romanticizing any aspect.
Humans are in need of balance between contrasting elements. Citra’s design language seeks to break free from the linear, orthogonal chains imposed by industrial, conveyor belt based production methods. The victory of civilisation over nature can’t be more radically expressed than by straight lines and orthogonal composition of elements. These are shapes that hardly ever occur in nature. Feeling at home requires a certain amount of radically human-made geometry to create a distance from the scary forces of nature. During the 19th and 20th century, the design languages in many spaces of art, including architecture, celebrated clean, straight lines. Modern architecture replaced arches and vaults with flat roofs and rectangular window openings. It was the victory of humanity over nature during a time where humans believed they could control nature. Today, more than half of the global population lives in urban, entirely man-made spaces. The scale is tipping in the other direction: Nature and natural geometry must find their way back into design. This desire is expressed in numerous areas, such as people’s desire for urban farms, rooftop gardens and vertical farming. But architecture requires more than adding plants to buildings to restore balance between nature and civilization. It requires a new design language. New geometries that are inspired by nature. This requires a breakthrough in design, production, and construction technologies. Organic designs are much more difficult to design and build. Parametric design, finite element analysis, abundant computing power, CNC cutting and 3D printing, lidar sensors and real-time data streams from construction sites to design offices are hard requirements to build economically with organic designs.
Last but not least: Design must have elements of surprise. Designs must excite. And designs must be humorous and lighthearted. In affordable housing, many designs are heartless, cold, functional. But a home is more than a house. A house is a functional building that fulfills technical needs. A home is the center of our life, where children grow up, where we love and hate each other, where we are able to die in peace. This requires much more than a functional design. It requires heart from the designer. And nothing expresses the heart and love of life as much as humor.
Citra draws inspiration from and admires specifically the works of Peter Zumthor, Adolf Loos, Aravena Alejandro, Antonio Gaudi, Santiago Calatrava, Roger Boltshauser, and Christiaan Conradie.