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Architects: Kode Architects
- Area: 456 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Won-Jun Jang
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Lead Architects: Min-Ho Kim
Closed Site - Apartments, with all their amenities and infrastructure, are the most common and efficient form of living in Korea. For those who choose to live in a detached house instead of an apartment, there must be certain things that make them want such a way of living. Terraces where you can feel nature at any time, large open gardens, and characteristic exteriors with different looks are definitely unique attractions of houses that you can't find in apartments. However, the reality is that densely packed urban planning has resulted in a large number of clustered homes closed on four sides, each with its own privacy, in housing complexes. The same was true for the subject land. As the site was surrounded by other houses on all four sides, the housing condition should be sensitive not only to the privacy of the owner but also to that of neighbors. In the urban context around the site, despite the existence of a large green space nearby, it was impossible to take an unhindered view of the natural landscape due to the houses on the adjacent land. Therefore, we intended to build a house that reflected the client's needs while protecting both their privacy and that of the neighbors and securing the maximum sense of openness in the closed site.
Land Analysis - The subject land is one of the lots in a detached housing complex in Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, and is located at the corner of the block. Thus, two of the four sides of the site are facing an 8 m road, and the other two sides are adjacent to neighboring houses. Although two sides face the road, there is already a building beyond the road on the right, and the land beyond the front road is currently an empty lot. However, as it is planned to build a detached house in the future there, it is almost as if all four sides are blocked by other houses. The front road is flat with almost no level difference, but the road on the right has a slope with a height difference of approximately 2 meters. Thus, we planned to utilize this to separate vehicle access and foot access.
Concept - 01. Upper Wall, Lower Wall - "How to open up the living space and how to close it down?" was the most important and difficult question that we faced on this site, which is blocked by buildings on all four sides and whose neighbors are sensitive to privacy issues. This question was the most important main theme that guided our planning throughout the project, and in the end, we determined that a building centered around a courtyard was inevitably the best option to protect privacy from the surrounding views, which are located in all directions like surveillance cameras. However, as we didn't intend to create a closed space for people to live in rather than just to stay for a while, we aimed to solve the privacy issues of both the clients and the neighbors by blocking the view of the surroundings while at the same time, creating a maximum sense of openness within the space.
Beyond the closed courtyard-style building that surrounds all sides of the site, the architectural element of the 'wall' was used to protect the privacy of the neighbors while planning a residential space that meets both the needs of the clients who wanted a place to relax in nature and of their children who wanted to have an independent space from their parents. Rather than utilizing the wall as an object that is separate from the building and simply blocks the view, our design integrates the wall with the building so that the wall can be felt as one of the architectural elements. Furthermore, rather than just a high wall along the boundary of the site to block the view of pedestrians, the wall integrated with the building is divided into a lower wall and an upper wall according to the vertical level on an architectural scale rather than a human scale and responds to various issues required at each level with different functions.
The lower walls, located at the basement and ground floor, primarily serve the practical function of storage while also shielding the view from the front house. In addition, they also serve as a guideline that guides entry and exit movements in the visually blocked building. The diagonal wall encountered when entering the interior of the site along the wall, which extends to the outside, directs the eye to the open space between the gaps of the neighboring houses, relieving the claustrophobic feeling that may be felt in a courtyard-style building. The upper wall, consisting of the second floor and an attic, is a key architectural element that not only serves the basic function of blocking the view from the outside but also realizes the client's request for privacy between their two children. The children's spaces, located on the same level but divided by the upper wall, symbolize the 'Sarang Chae' (guest building) and the 'anchor' (main building) of a hanok, a Korean-style house, respectively.
The son's room, with all the views from the room directed at the outside of the site, is more open outward, like the 'sarangchae' of a hanok, while the daughter's room, which is located more inward, has a more introverted structure, like the 'anchae' of a hanok, the women's room. The son's room has a corner window that looks out onto the greenery surrounding the site, while the daughter's room looks out onto the inner courtyard, providing both children with natural scenery to enjoy from their respective rooms as well as the different orientations, completely blocking out interference from each other's views, thus solving the issue of privacy. Also, when viewed from the center of the building, the depth of space created by the overlapping of the upper and lower walls maximizes the openness of the courtyard, relieving the claustrophobic feeling that may be felt in a U-shaped layout. In the end, the upper and lower walls are the best architectural solution to two questions, 'How to close?', which is about the privacy needs of both the clients and neighbors, and 'How to open?', which is about the openness of the courtyard-style building.
02. U-Shaped Layout - There are three main reasons why the building is set in a "U" shape on the site. The demands of the clients include the protection of privacy from neighbors, a natural relaxation space, and a space that can be used as a gallery instead of just a living space. If it were just a matter of satisfying the needs for nature, there would be many other arrangements besides the U shape. However, to create a space where people can relax comfortably without worrying about views from their surroundings, a U-shaped layout that blocks the view from neighboring buildings was optimal. In addition, we intentionally planned a slightly longer corridor through a U-shaped layout, which allows us to plan the longest corridor in the same land area, and designed a gallery wall around this corridor so that the space can also be used as a gallery rather than just a residential space. Given the urban context of the site and the needs of the clients, the U-shaped layout was the most natural way for the building to sit on the site.
03. Courtyard and Water Space - Located at the center of the building with various views available from the inside, the courtyard is the main space that sets the overall mood of the house, and thus, we wanted to give it a similar texture to the architectural language of the house to create a sense of unity. The water space chosen after such consideration is another architectural gesture that responds to the clients' demand to use the space as a gallery as well as a living space and to the need to find a maximum sense of openness in a courtyard-style building. The water that fills the courtyard reflects the surroundings on the surface, creating another sense of openness that cannot be found in the sky, and the water space is like a work of art in itself, sitting serenely in the center of the house, making it feel like a gallery space even though it is a residential space.
However, because a house is a residential space, after all, where people live, in consideration of the need for a normal yard, not a water space, a large slab was placed slightly lower in the center of the courtyard, and a water space was created around the slab, instead of planning the entire courtyard as a water space. Depending on the depth of the water space, the courtyard appears differently: when the water depth is shallow, it looks like an ordinary yard, but when the water depth is higher than the slab located at the center of the courtyard, it is created as a complete water space. Thus, the depth of the water space can be adjusted as desired according to the client's needs so that the courtyard can be used in a more diverse way.
04. Scaled Façade - Due to the height difference of the site, the basement floor, which is not completely underground, feels like a ground floor to pedestrians, although it is actually at a basement level. This is because the basement level is exposed, almost like one story of the building from the front street. This makes a two-story house look like a three-story building to pedestrians. This, combined with the height of the attic, could have made this building a very tall and overbearing building that would have been out of place in the landscape of the neighborhood of detached houses. As we wanted to create a building that understood and respected the context of the site, we worked hard to make the building fit into the surrounding landscape and blend in without standing out. In order to maintain a sense of scale as a detached house, the building needed to be perceived as a segmented mass rather than a huge monolithic mass, and it was not feasible to segment the mass at all, so we attempted to make a fine adjustment to the sense of scale of the building through the facade design. By using red bricks for the basement and second floors and gray bricks for the ground floor in between, the separation of materials primarily emphasizes the individuality of the mass. Just the use of different materials has led to very noticeable results. The mass of the second floor and attic, which protrude slightly more than the first floor, is both protruding and slightly separated from the gray walls of the first floor, making it appear to float beyond the simple separation of the mass. As a result, pedestrians do not perceive the building as a three-story mass but as a series of masses with a scale of one or two stories.
We wanted to create a building that meets the needs of the clients and has a full understanding of the context and condition of the land. It is a closed site with buildings on all sides. In a condition where not only the privacy of the clients but also that of the neighbors had to be taken into consideration, the wall that we chose was an architectural language that protected the privacy of the clients and, at the same time, did not make the neighbors feel offended by the building's design. The inner and outer spaces separated by the wall transcend just a simple division of inside and outside and are rather a context of different scales that exist beyond the wall, the architectural standard we created. The wall works as a device to protect the privacy of the neighbors in the urban context beyond the wall and also as a device to protect the privacy of the two children and create a sense of depth in the space within the architectural scale of the wall. In the end, the wall is both an architectural standard that we have created and an architectural gesture that reads and responds to the needs of each in the context of the different scales that exist beyond the wall.
