The project is a four-story multi-functional building with commercial programs and a temporary living place, a typical low-rise building typology in Seoul. Programs include a bar in the basement level, a café on the first, second, and third levels, and a studio which can be transformed in order to expand the café area if needed.
The aim of this project is to make people to have a similar experience to climbing a small mountain through their movement in relation to architectural form and space.In this way, the project creates a domestic journey in the small scale building of a highly dense urban area. Through internal and external stair ways, bridges, corridors, and a rooftop deck, people not only experience the inside and the outside continuously and perceive framed views to the urban landscape through openings, but have visual interconnection with public realm –street--. In this way, architectural devices, like stair ways and balconies, become intermediary space between the inside and outside of a building, public and private.
Entering the first hall from the street, one confronts the roughness of the concrete in the circulation space, which is more emotional with natural light through an aperture. On the contrary, inside the building, in the café, there is a distinct atmosphere with white painted walls from the circulation space with the concrete. In addition, spatial contrast between the austere circulation space and the open spaces of the café, having a higher ceiling, provide totally different experience to people in terms of materiality as well as the perception of space. Finally, a roof-top deck, the destination of a domestic journey, has a broad open view to the urban landscape.