Double House / On Architects Inc.

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Text description provided by the architects. The house is located on a sloped corner site in the Innovation City, and it's looking at a distant mountain in the northeast. The site is sitting at an intersection of a mixed-use housing block and a general dispatched housing block. To use the existing slope, the floor of the retail area on the 1st floor is divided from its corner into two in a diagonal direction, and the level of those two floors are set differently in order to maximize spatial flexibility. For the house on the 3rd floor, its access, entrance and living room are designed to offer a view to the mountain in the northeast. The living room is placed on a space where the mass is segmented in two directions so that it can be linked with a deck outside and also take advantage of natural ventilation all the time.

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We are living in the era of single households. Yet in Ulsan, decent housings for them are very scarce. For the people who are living in a rented house under the circumstances, the architect wanted to create a quality space. And as single-room or two-room housings don°Øt provide any independent or private space at all, he wanted to give a separate access and a sense of privacy to the residents while proposing a communal space by using a central circulation established on the corner. For the residence of the owner on the 3rd floor, he attempted to place a kitchen, the owner's most valued element, in a most decent area, and also to introduce an outdoor space which can be accessed from the living room, kitchen and bedroom.

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The essence of this project is the experimental and unconventional circulation system. The straight stairs which draws a diagonal line across this corner site is an unacceptable concept for general owners of mixed-use housing because they think it will affect the lease income of the 1st and 2nd floors. However, considering the nature of the site connected with a dispatched housing (2-storey) block, the architect thought it would be better to split the retail area on the 1st floor into two independent leasing spaces. And as the site is touching the streets on both sides, there would be no problem to use the entire retail area as one space. On entering the 3rd floor via this stairs, one always comes to face a scenery of distant mountains and the close one behind the dispatched housing block. The outdoor stairs provide an access to each unit, and in the end, turn out to be an outdoor terrace for them. During this process, space comes to experience contraction and expansion alternatively and ends up stimulating an architectural excitement. 

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The tight budget was the biggest challenge of this project. The owner couldn't allow going over the budget, and the architect had to use it very meticulously. As all owners do, it was natural for the owner to desire better and more things within a given budget. So it was very difficult to lead the owner who is possessed by such an idea and set priorities through choice and concentration in accordance with the budget. But during that process, the owner agreed with the architect suggesting to give a top priority to essential elements in order to create a good space, and also he gave full support to ideas proposed by the architect. 

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