Cocooning Building / L'eau Design

Curated by Hana Abdel

Architects: L'eau Design
Area: 999 m²
Year: 2017
Photographs:Kyungsub Shin, Huh Ik
Manufacturers: Cheonggo Brick, Stuc-O-flex
Construction: Co-Workers

Text description provided by the architects. Cocooning - An active Self-Territorialization protecting oneself from the changing outdoor environment.

"Cocooning phenomenon" is a term made by German Social Psychologist S. Popcon, and it stands for the habit of silkworm hiding inside a cocoon and protecting it-self from the outside. As modern society gets complicated, people pursue the intimate comfort of oneself through a slightly enclosed place than excessively exposed exterior activities.

Cocooning Building / L'eau Design - Interior Photography, Stairs — © Kyungsub Shin

'New-Cocooning tribe' is different from the Enclosed type Cocooning tribe of the past, who habitually seclude and escape, and actively spends their hobby and leisure time in its own space. Also. Modern people want a substantive relaxing space where they can guarantee the personal environment in amid of network society which is overly exposed with information.

Cocooning Building / L'eau Design - Interior Photography — © Huh Ik

This kind of modern people's cocooning secures personal privacy by it-self inside the complex city center and wraps its body from the surroundings and makes its own lifestyle. In the process of commercialization of the quiet exclusive residential area, Banpo Cocooning is an architectural strategy where houses and the city reconciliate and co-exist, avoiding gentrification phenomenon.

'Nudge' Effect inside the changing city center - Cocooning gradually induces a positive change of urban landscape little by little inside the unconsciousness with soft invasion not coercion. By changing 'Daily Landscape', it makes people to form its own pattern. This little change inside people's unconsciousness always tries to find a meaning in everything, and in other words, it evokes kind of an Apophenia effect which is a tendency of finding a pattern in amid of disorder and brings new vitality and change around urban area.

Innermost 'Cocooning' of its own inside City center - The plot has located between the 4th-5th level high residential areas deeply inside the road. This highly dense residential buildings standing on the ground except for the parking space are keen of privacy invasion. It's hard to handle the problem which the inside of surrounding multiplex and multifamily houses could be seen and psychological insecurity only with the legal separation space and the face blocking structure blocking the view from the window.

Therefore, the residential buildings inside dense city center are requiring an enclosed boundary which could protect the invasion of their privacy. Inside the boundary of 'Cocoon' with flexible air layer, the inner story of its own makes composure which could be sustainably generated and at the same time protects privacy from the surrounding buildings. This kind of 'Cocooning' makes boundary outwardly according to the privacy relationship with the surrounding buildings inside the residential exclusive area but makes its inner individual landscape and co-exists inwardly.