Grid as an instrument of creating of the universal space in dwelling

Abstract

As a spatial form, the grid pattern has influenced a range of human activities, from urban planning, architecture, and modern art to graphic design, archaeology, and cartography. The grid is easy to lay out, easy to comprehend, and divides land into uniform units suitable for development. It is not a form, but a method of establishment of rational spatial divisions. At the same time it gives the most simple and most flexible solution. At the urban scale it organizes the city pattern with its streets and blocks, creates the architectural composition within the urban block or unit, orders the elements of the building. Grid is a highly efficient method of spatial organization from constructive point of view, but it creates difficulties in the functional organization of dwelling - universal unit can not be equally used both for the inhabited house areas and for the serving spaces. The study examines the cases of applying the grid structure in housing on the levels of the dwelling unit (flat) and spatial unit (room) and focuses on the methods of adapting the modular system to the specific living program. Grid concept creates extremely uniform, functionally universal and constructively simple spaces, but for appropriate living, it must be modified. There are several solutions depending on the size of initial cell - separation of the units with minor walls, attachment of them together, and introduction an extra cell for the technical spaces.