Space House / HBA-rchitects

Curated by María Francisca González

Architects: HBA-rchitects
Year: 2018
Photographs:Woochul Jung
Manufacturers: Board-formed concrete
Lead Architects: Hyobin Jung
Construction: ileap Constructure
Structural Engineer: Kum Structure

1. Space
The universe is a broad word that encompasses all the material, space, and time that exists in the world. Would not the family's material, time, and space be like another small universe? The fact that the word "universe" is composed of 宇(house) 宙(house) gives more meaning to our idea. We decided to make a small universe of 13.4m X 13.4m squares, assuming that each of the planets, the family, would be involved in various ways and their time. Because the house was like a small universe of space and time.

2. Space instead of walls
The space in which we have lived has always been divided by the wall, and the story of the individual has been put in a defined and limited space. Personal time is only flowed and remembered in a closed cube. We decided to split the space between space and another space instead of the wall. It is a space as emptiness that has no purpose like the spaceless space of the universe and no function. Unlike a perfectly disconnected wall, this voided space communicates with each space and provides an ambiguous relationship between individual spaces. Time flows through space and space, creating various stories and being remembered together. All the space that makes up the house flows and feels like a universe.

3. Nature in space
At first meeting, the owner asked me to build a house which is spacious and living, a house which is felt wide and a house which is good for nature. Figuring out his requirements, it was a general house that gives a wide yard to the south and has a nice view in front. However, the land was in a new city forming with divided territories by 230 ~ 265 m2. It was not easy to put these two propositions in these public parcels. Luckily, there were roads and small reservoirs on the front, so it was a little free from neighboring parcels.

If external conditions wew poor, I tried to take the nature back home. We split the yard, not the wide front yard, to create small yards throughout the house, and these vacant yards became architectural tools related to nature in various ways. The sky in the place where all sides are open is always a natural presence over the head, but the sky that lays on the roof in the courtyard becomes a special sky where the clouds flow and the wind is seen. Nature that spreads out in front of us is the background of our everyday life, but the nature that we see through the wall that is long and wide is approaching as a meaningful work like a picture of a width.

4. People in Nature
When viewed from the outside, it seems to be a cube-shaped building with all sides blocked, but in fact, this house has a vacant space opened to the east, west, north. The cross-shaped empty space through the house allows nature to penetrate deep into the house. And connecting the empty space is a hallway connecting space and space. Unlike conventional formal houses that can only move from space to space through the wall, this house must pass through a vacant space filled with nature. It is the inevitable structure that experiences nature permeated in the middle of movement of space. It is an inevitable but indirect experience of living in the middle of settlement. Assimilating gradually with nature is our small desire for the owner who likes nature.

5. Space and Time
The main material of this house is exposed concrete. The outer cube that touches the nature each other is the pine board exposure-finish that uses the texture of the tree, and the small inner courtyards where the person lives are exposed concrete finish with various square pattern formwork. The most important reason why we selected exposed concrete after a comparison of various materials was time.

Space House / HBA-rchitects - Windows, Bench — © Woochul Jung

This family, like a small universe, needed material properties that would grow with them and change with them. Although the exposed concrete finish that reveals the properties of the concrete as it is without additional finishing material is rugged and rough, it is the most unobtrusive, pure and natural material that deeply accepts the light and the static image. On the ground fact that the exposed concrete can melt the time of the family, it is the most appropriate material.