INDENTATION

The client had lived in detached house at the current site for more than 40 years. The client, elderly couple, is now retired and decided to develop their own property into multi-housing building for rent and for their own living. Another critical reason for new construction is that most surrounding buildings are already or being developed into higher and fatter multi-housings or one-room housings, and it consequentially affects the client’s quality of living such as a lack of daylight, disrupting views, invasion of privacy, and the degrading the street. ‘SO-AM’ is trying in response to these degraded conditions by the indentation of the mass to secure the comfort of living for each units in itself as well as by this articulation to give appropriate scale to the surrounding context. For lower levels facing two roads, frame with full height window wall is expressed rather than solid wall to differentiate commercial use as well as opened response to the street & neighbor.

RAISED HOUSE

The client’s living space is located in 5th & 6th floor. For the client who lived only in the detached house rather than apartment, we designed to maximize the advantages of living in the house with 3 dimensional space planning together with outdoor terraces as like shifting ground to higher level; one large terrace facing north and the other facing south on the upper level which regain the maximum daylight and view further out than before. Although the actual living space area is reduced, the spatial composition give more linked between spaces and various views with diverse windows throughout both levels. Last room in the corner on 6th floor is designed as a special room with higher ceiling gable roof and japan cedar used for internal finishing. All together it provides much comfortable quality of living space.

SO-AM(素岩) / Blanc

 ‘SO-AM’ (client family’s pen name) means ‘white’, ‘basis’ & ‘origin’ rock. As following the name ‘SO-AM’, it is designed to be brighter, be basis in the centre of crossroads as the site located in response to the surrounding greyish, gloomy buildings cladded by dark bricks and stones and the deep shade as well and streets for refreshing the atmosphere as ‘new’. To achieve the meaning of it, the building is cladded with ‘Blanc’ (blanche: white) clay brick together with brown concrete brick to express indentation mass and Blanc (meaning white but actually not white) color with different graining.