Corner 60’s House by Soar Design Studio

_{^{Project Name： Corner 60’s}}
_{^{Architecture Firm：Soar Design Studio}}
^{_{Lead Architect：}}^{_{Yu-Jui Chang}}
_{^{Completion Year：2017}}
_{^{Built Area : 178 m2}}
_{^{Project Location：Changhua City, Taiwan}}
_{^{Photographer：Hey!Cheese}}

Description from architect Soar Design Studio:

This is a renewal project bearing the aesthetics of the old Taiwanese era, in the form of a corner building in a quiet community. We did our best in preserving the old tiles, fine stone finishing and window grille that have marked the era this building has been through.

The owner, a teacher with enthusiasm on education and love of old buildings, hopes to create a learning environment for students, so we proposed a renewal idea that bestows experimental opportunities for students, as well as becoming a café space for cultivating neighborhood interaction.

We envisaged a home that houses a lab space for kids to conduct scientific experiments, a gathering place for neighbors over coffee.

From the viewpoint of the dwelling characteristics, this design seeks to capture the local architectural aesthetics and the good old corridor social fabric in the old buildings, which are too often on the demise in the contemporary urban environment.

The overall environment needs to tackle the issues of poor natural illumination and ventilation.

So by using materials such as glass tiles and grille, etc., as well as opening up flooring slab, we created double-height ceiling that allows the ground-floor space to become well-lit. Furthermore, by planting a large rainforest-type tree traversing the ground and the first floors, surrounding by open-planning spaces and a mini sky-walk cladded in grille, we successfully rectified the usual ill effect of sub-tropical climate normally would have on urban interior spaces.

There is a lot of traditional Taiwan’s architecture elements in this house, we keep it as much as possible, such as the feature materials make modern people nostalgic mottled tiles, terrazzo floor, forged flower window, the original door and furniture’s wood (Taiwan eucalyptus) had been reused. The new add-in materials are primitive, natural and penetrate, for example black iron plate, solid wood, glass brick and etc. We hope that the combination between new and old materials will not conflict, and visually opened.

This is a place combining daily living, weekend classroom, holiday café, community sharing and various composite functions. Usage of each floor and field are not limited, breaking the boundaries created by partition in normal house, switching the usage under different situation. Other than that, we moderate introduced the Taiwanese dislike alley style into this case, so that create a good indoor ventilation environment, and ameliorate the subtropical humid climate.