The Body House

1 : 100 at A3
FFL +0.52 (1M plinth)

The spine stops short. It runs 7.45 m from the west wall and dies in a 750 × 850 pier that is also the chimney breast — one piece of masonry carrying flue, roof and stair. The 0.81 gap it leaves is the door's other choice: left into the chest, right into the gut.

Seat, sill, one line. The ground sill sits at 2M = 1.04, exactly 0.52 above the floor, so the 1M seat's top surface and the sill are the same line. The seat runs 8.6 m and stops where the wall turns out of the sun.

Curved built-ins, no joinery. Seat, counter and shelves are all 0.35–0.65 bands struck off the inner face at a constant offset — a mason's dimension, not a joiner's, which is the cheap labour here.

1 : 100 at A3
FFL +3.64 (7M)

Sleeping in the narrow end. The 350 step-in happens only north of the waist, so the womb loses 0.94 m of width here and the two flank windows end up close enough to work as a cross-draught in summer — 6.78 m across, one room, no corridor.

The landing is a room. It gets the 2.25 m south window and the lantern, so the one space you pass through four times a day is also the warmest and brightest — 8.9 m² that no one has to book.

Children's rooms are deliberately small. 8.4 m² each, each with one window and one wardrobe band. The surplus went to the landing, on the assumption that children at 2,300 m live in the warm room and sleep in the cold one.

1 : 100 at A3
27.7° N · winter 38.9° · equinox 62.3° · summer 85.7°

The brows are still slab edges — but the upper one is now 210, not 450. Tested at four dates rather than two, the 450 was shading a third of the upper glass at equinox noon. Both edges are now cut to one rule: projection = 0.51 × the drop from soffit to head. See Sheet 06.

Winter sun lands on the floor, not the wall. Measured off the brow tips at 38.9°: 2.08 m of floor downstairs, 1.57 m upstairs, both beginning 0.65 m inside the glass — which is where the seat and the landing bench are, and why the floor is the mass that stores it.

The throat is 5.72 m of open air — and now it has a lid. Ground floor to lantern glass, with a five-leaf shutter at the landing edge that closes it in winter and opens it in summer. Sheet 08.

1 : 100 at A3
18R @ 173 · going 260 · 2R+G = 606

18 risers at 173, going 260. 260 is M/2, so each flight of nine is exactly 2.08 — 4M, the same number as the lobe head and the half-landing level. The pair fits the 3.20 throat with 1.12 m of landing, which is also the only place on the stair you can put down a basket. 2R + G = 606.

Headroom is 2.06, not 2.00. Tight but legal-feeling, and it only pinches over the bottom three treads of flight B where you are already ducking under the landing.

The stair runs against the spine. Flight B sits 375 mm off the spine wall, so the masonry that carries the floor also carries the stair — one thing doing two jobs, which is the argument for the spine being masonry at all.

1 : 250 at A3
read left to right

1 : 25 at A3
shadow line = soffit − projection × tan (altitude)

The rule, not the number. Projection = drop ÷ tan (90° − φ). The ground brow already obeyed it — 350 on a 690 drop. The upper did not: 450 on a 430 drop is a far deeper cut, which is why it failed in the shoulder seasons while the ground brow passed by 23 mm.

Where the year turns. The ground brow first touches its head at 63.1° altitude — 24 March; the upper at 64.0° — 26 March. Two days apart, and both give the glass back on the matching September dates. At 450 the upper was losing its head on 28 January, in the coldest month of the year.

What 210 cost, and what it now costs. 240 mm less eaves over the upper glass — answered by the 80 band above. But the answer is a second element on a wall that had none, 5.7 m up on the only elevation anyone sees. That is the live doubt: Sheet 12.

1 : 100 at A3
distance measured along the walked line

4M, not 5M. 2.08 in the lobe against 2.82 in the chest is a 740 mm drop — a head-and-shoulders difference you feel going in and coming out. At 2.60 it was 220 mm, which no body registers. The ceiling is the underside of the lobe roof slab; nothing structural moves.

The waist door head comes down with it. 2.08 above the ground floor, + 2.60 to datum, so from the lobe lintel to the throat nothing is higher than 4M above your feet. Just under three metres of walking under one head height, and then it goes.

The release is 2.75× in height and 9.7× in section. 2.08 → 5.72 overhead; 1.89 m² → 18.30 m² of cross-section, in one step through a 420 wall. That step is the whole argument for the throat.

1 : 25 at A3
six leaves · 1.975 × 0.520 × 0.090 · void 3.20 × 1.975

How it is worked. A 620 mm oak lever on the landing balustrade at + 4.54 — 900 above the landing floor — on a steel shaft under the nosing; a push-rod turns all six leaves together — the last one is the stair mouth, and it folds behind you as you come up. 90° of lever is the whole travel, it latches at both ends, and there is no half position. It is on the side you pass going to bed, and it is the only moving part in the house.

Winter: shut at dusk, open in the morning. Closed, the ankles in the chest gain 4 K and the landing loses 7 — the right trade once the children are in bed, the wrong one at eight in the morning. The 24 mm residual slot is deliberate: the throat never goes fully dead, so moisture from the stove and the kitchen still finds the lantern.

Summer: open by day, and the lantern with it. Two top-hung lantern sashes give 1.24 m² of outlet against 1.10 m² of inlet at the north ground windows, over a 5.72 m stack. At a 6 K difference that is 0.75 m³/s — about fourteen air changes an hour. The section that costs heat in January is what makes June bearable without a fan.

1 : 20 at A3
cut at + 1.60, looking down

The rule that governs all of it. The wall is 150 stone / 120 wood-fibre / 150 earth block. The insulation line is continuous and never cut. Pockets 220 and shallower come out of the inner leaf; anything deeper — seat, wood store, boot bench, deep store — is a local swelling of the inner leaf into the room, not a hole toward the weather.

1.96 m³ and 4.5 m² out of the thickness. That is the whole storage of the ground floor and the whole seating of the south side, and none of it is furniture. There is nothing freestanding against the south wall in this house.

Two wedges are filled. Where the curve leaves less than 150 of usable depth the poché is simply solid — drawn dark, labelled, and named. A leftover you have decided to fill is a detail; a leftover you have not is a defect.

1 : 20 at A3
section on the chest; waist plan cut at + 1.60

true perspective from the walked line
eye 1.60 · figure 1.72

Both are projected, not drawn. Same outline, same levels, same openings as the plans — pinhole projection at 1.60 m with back faces culled. If the plan moves, these move.

What the orbit was hiding. From 21 m the house reads as two horizontal bands and a stone lump, not as a curved plan. The womb shape is invisible from every position a person will ever stand in — it is felt in the body between stages 2 and 5, and seen almost nowhere.

The brows are the elevation. With the upper cut to 210 the two shadow bands are no longer equal, and the house gains a slight top-lightness it did not have at 450. That is a consequence of a thermal decision, and I think it is an improvement.

Sheet 12

What I'd defend, what I doubt

1 : 5 at A3
wall 420 = 20 render / 130 stone / 120 wood fibre / 140 earth block / 10 plaster

One rule covers five of the six. Every horizontal surface on this house throws water away from the face below it: the plinth weathering, the sill oversail, the drip band, the brow throat, the coping throat. Where a horizontal cannot throw, the render is not there.

The render never meets the ground. It starts at + 0.52 and the plinth takes the whole ground-contact zone — 520 of stone above the apron, 170 clear of the 350 splash line, with a 300 × 200 washed-stone margin at its foot to break the splash before it arrives.

The lobe is not bonded to the render, it is bonded behind it. A 40 open joint, hemp-lime packed and drained at the foot, keeps the two masses reading as two. It is the only deliberate gap on the outside of the building.

NHL 3.5 · 8 scratch / 8 float / 4 finish = 20
five coats of limewash, 3 % yellow ochre

One coat, two tools. The change at + 1.04 is not a joint and not a different material — it is the same continuous three-coat lime, floated open below and sponged closed above. Nothing to fail at the line, and the seat above it casts the shadow that makes the change legible.

Why coarse below. The bottom 520 of every wall in a working house takes boots, baskets, firewood and children. A 4 mm open float takes a scar and hides a patch; a fine closed finish shows every one of them for twenty years.

Limewash, not paint. Five thin coats, re-applied by anyone with a brush and a bucket, no scaffolding tender and no specialist. That is the maintenance argument, and it is the only reason a rendered house makes sense at this altitude.

1 : 100 at A3
apron 8.60 × 3.64 = 31.3 m² at + 0.26

The edge that was missing. A 420 wall on the outer edge, top at + 0.78 — 520 above the apron, exactly the height the sill-seat sits above the floor inside. The same seat, one level down. It runs 5.48 and stops 1.56 short at each end so you can walk off the corners.

The apron is the lobe floor. Both at + 0.26. Two risers of 130 take you up to + 0.52 at the south door, and the flag surface is the same stone on both sides of it — so the apron reads as inside the house that happens to have no roof.

It drains through, not to. Riven flags 60 thick on 100 of compacted stone, butt-jointed with a grit fill, falling 1:60 away. No gully, no channel, nothing to block with leaves in October when the cherry drops.

1 : 100 at A3
bench cut 1.60 north, filled 0.90 south

The stone gets more worked, never different. Rammed earth, then loose flags, then laid flags, then close-jointed flags, then a polished runner. One material from the field gate to the fire, changing only in how much work has been done to it — which is also the measure of how far inside you are.

Roof water is a store, not an attenuation. 62 m² of roof; 40 mm of monsoon in an hour is 2,480 litres, so a 2,000-litre cistern fills and overflows inside the hour. It is there for the dry months. The overflow goes to a soakaway in the field, not to the drainage run.

The firewood is not against the house. It stands against the retaining wall, 200 clear of it, on 150 of stone, under slate, open at both ends. Four cubic metres is about one winter. Nothing that harbours damp or insects touches a wall that has insulation in it.

lantern glass 1.55 × 0.61 at + 6.55
2700 K at the threshold, 3000 K in the lantern

Four fixtures, 680 lumens. Threshold 300, stair 80, landing 200, lantern shared. That is the whole external and circulation lighting of the house, and it is deliberate: at 2,300 m the thing worth seeing at night is outside the window.

Nothing points up. No uplight on the wall, no light in the soffit of either brow, nothing on the parapet. The rendered wall at night is dark, and the only lit thing above 6.24 is the lantern glass itself.

The lantern is not a beacon. 40 lumens leaving a 0.95 m² pane at 800 m is a lit window, not a signal. It reads as somebody being awake, which is the correct amount of information for a house to give a valley.

1 : 100 at A3
orthographic, from the same outline as the plans

Three windows, not evenly spaced. 1.48 / 2.25 / 1.48 on whole arc widths, sitting where the chest, the throat and the gut want them. The gaps between them are the piers that carry the book recess and the lamp shelves. The elevation is a consequence, and reading it tells you the plan.

Four horizontals and nothing else. Plinth top, sill-seat, brow, drip band, coping. Everything that appears to be composition on this face is a line that throws water.

The upper windows are smaller and higher than they "should" be. That is the 430 drop from soffit to head doing its work, and it is why the upper brow is 210. If the elevation looks top-light, that is the shading rule showing, not an error.

1 : 100 at A3
cheek wall shown in front, cut at 1.60

This face has almost no glass, and that is the plan speaking. The east is the entry side and the cold morning side; the gut window and one bedroom window are all it gets. The lobe does the work of a front elevation without being one.

The 40 joint is the whole composition. Two masses, two materials, one gap between them, drained at the foot. There is no moulding, no band and no change of plane on this face other than the ones the water requires.

It looks unbalanced, and it is. The lobe sits off-centre because the door faces the track, not the house. Moving it would balance the elevation and break the approach. Sheet 11 shows what you actually see from here, which is not this drawing.

Sheet 20

Three decisions, and the one I would not bet on