A house is a place of habitation—a dwelling and shelter. A house is also a home—a place of identity. Just as an individual’s identity is personal (private) and social (public), the home is also a shelter separated from the world (inward) and a place of center from which to explore the world (outward).
One House is located in a typical urban area named 'Pangyo' in Korea where recently fully developed and 10minutes away from the Seoul. The site surrounded by low mountains and a water stream passes near the site. In Pangyo, each house has individual boundary and adjacent to each other. The One House celebrates interactions between families while maintaining a strong sense of privacy and of ownership. Therefore the One House is a place where degree of privacy is maintained with openings and spaces are merged in continuous spaces redefined by natural light.
The adjacency of the houses surrounding the boundary leads to development of opening and massing that communicates different size and location of openings in consideration of the privacy from the public.
The volumes came from the strict application of local urban regulations and result reflected the client request: 1. Living room should be private from the public street, but at the same time desire to maximize the exposure orient to East to South. 2. While it has three separate floors(include roof top attic), client want to keep the connectivity between family members in terms of visual, sound and light. 3. Client desired to his house composed with wood and white while.
The main space in One House is an double height living room which connecting the diverse spaces. This double height living room provides space for family members to gather and communicate at the same time it allows privacy. There is a volume in front of living room which allows privacy from street and the opening created by moving of a volume toward South East allows light into house. When light comes in, some spaces get directly and some spaces get light through filtering which is light that comes into one space spread into another space. Also, other architectural components such as walls, doors, stairs and window frames are customized on site and designed to be harmonized with color white.
At the same time this three volume layout not only maximizes surface area touching the given nature environment, but also reflects and communicates with surrounding urban settings while having different architectural languages and maintaining a degree of privacy from the public.