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Architects: Ayutt and Associates design
- Area: 500 m²
- Year: 2013
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Photographs:Piyawut Srisakul
Text description provided by the architects. The brief designer received from the client was for functional spaces like any normal house, though what they really liked were square, modern style house, but they asked that it should not be hot inside. Even though the usable space of the land is limited, but the client still wanted a large greenery area to enjoy, as well as a modern house with sun shades and rain protections. This is the most challenge part for the architect, who was to configure the modern language of architecture in a way that would suit the hot and humid climate of Thailand.
The architectural language of YAK01 house was inspired by the traditional Thai house layout and space. The ground floor is arranged as a Thai traditional house design with a central courtyard that functions as a feature foyer and distributor before accessing to the main living space.
By the way, the designer does not want to follow all of the well-trodden path of the traditional Thai house design, Designer has a completely different form to the aforementioned formula and proves that a problem does not necessarily have just on right answer by following the traditional way.
The first challenge was the relatively small site in a shape close to a rectangle, with its narrow sides facing West and East. Spreading the required functional spaces over one floor would fill up the whole site, meaning there would be no open spaces and poor ventilation, AAd thus made a two-story building, with the building mass placed along the Southern perimeter of the site, in order to open up as much space as possible on the northern side for a garden.
The second challenge was: Behind the guise of modernism, lies AAd’s intention to create Thai spaces out of modern architectural vocabulary, to reconcile the demands of the climate with those of the contemporary Thai lifestyle. On the whole, this house is the result of trying to answer age-old questions with designer’s own new formulas. The interest lies in the fact that he challenged the established routine and experimented for other answer, even if the result is not the most perfect one, but at the least YAK01 house is his own answer, born out of his own search, without recourse to those well-established norms.
All materials used in this house are thoroughly modern: off-form concrete, metal, glass and aluminium. The structural elements are made of reinforced concrete while the roof on the top floor is made from metal sheets filled with heat and acoustic insulation. For the ground floor, the flat concrete roof has a layer of gravel to prevent heat from entering the building.
The brick plaster walls are punctuated by areas of glazing with the exterior facades mostly rendered in white to reflect the heat.
To incorporate a modern feeling to the house design, the architect installed customized Silver Aluminum Extrusion Strip vertically on the wall of the master bedroom and master bathroom. The strips make the house look like a silver box floating on a black granite sheet below.
Heat and rain form the basic problem faced by buildings in this region, and are therefore crucial to the design. While this house does not have traditional long roof or large overhanging eaves such as usually found in tropical regions, nevertheless the upper volume overhangs the lower one, in effect acting as rain and sun protection for the ground floor, as well as effecting a play of shadow, adding depth to the facades.
The Aluminum strips façade are also designed for air buffer insulation to cool down the main bedroom space during the daytime.
“I’m not saying that it’s 100 percent Thai, But at least it’s a try”
