Wall House: A Tectonic Response to the Land Based On Daily Life
As an architectural method, tectonics is an approach to measuring the land and responding to it. Ultimately, tectonics presents a way of architectural thinking oriented toward the surrounding environment.
Tectonics was the starting point for us to craft a response to the land, to define the needs of the users, to anchor the form of the building, and to determine the materials. We constructed this response to the island landscape that the building is situated on
Urban Context
Taiwan is limited in land area, hemmed in by mountains and seas. The city of Toufen in Miaoli County is near a fishing harbor, swept by salty sea winds. The climate is damp with cold winters. The site faces west, next to a 20m-wide road. Across the road is a large open field, exposing the building to the heat of the sun during the afternoons. The site is low-lying, with flooding possible in the rainy season.
Sun exposure, humidity, and flooding therefore became the most prominent issues during the design process.
Situated within the island landscape of Taiwan, Wall House employed a vertical construction strategy in response to the limited floor space of the site, as well as double envelope walls to create a layer of air in response to the hot and humid outside world.
Program
The house is designed for a family of five: two parents and three children, two sons and one daughter all around 20 years of age. We proposed a dual building program, for the present and 10 years into the future—a home you never leave.
For the present, we began with the needs of a single family. The building is five floors. The first floor is a public working space for the family’s auto maintenance shop. The west side of the second and third floor form the living space. The parents wished for a sense of closeness in the family’s daily activities, so there are no divisions for family activities such as conversation, cooking, 'eating, and reading. Therefore, the second floors is a single continuous open space, with flexible boundaries that can adapt to the family members’ needs. The third floor comprises the childrens’ private rooms. The fourth floor is rented out. The fifth floor is the rooftop space, used mostly for laundry.
In 10 years, as the children start families of their own, the two sides of the third floor can be integrated. The third and fourth floors can then house the new families started by the two sons. The home will be extended from a single two- floors space to three one-floor spaces. The rooms can be flexibly deployed, so that the lives of the three families can be as independent or as intertwined as they like. The children can live independently and start their own families, without ever leaving home. This is the home you never leave.
The paths through the building branch into two, to meet both the current needs for distinct private and public paths, and the future needs for both independent and shared living. After much thought, we proposed these two branches that correspond to the public and private spaces. In their daily lives, family members can choose to take either the private path or public path through the house. The paths also provide inlets for the light and breeze of the local microclimate.
Physical Sensations
The solid and heavy concrete box form defends against the intense heat of the afternoon sun. As the sunlight from the west creates sharp contrasts of light and shadow, the building remains anchored to the land like a sculpture.
The outer wall features a porous surface that filters out light. Sunlight from the west is guided into the space through openings of various sizes, allowing these fragments of light to illuminate the interior.
The west side of the building is bound by double walls with a thick layer of air in between. The air layer keeps out the sun’s heat coming from the west, and the light let in by the porous outer wall flows with the air across the space.
Openings were created in the floors to create a naturally lit courtyard, where the sunlight makes its mark on the solid concrete. The light falls on a space reserved for plantings, so that the family’s trees can also thrive!
Materials
Concrete: a solid and eternal material. We chose to use reinforced concrete as the primary material in response to the strong and salty winds and high humidity that are the hallmarks of the local climate. This material gives the building strong and solid structure, on which the other materials can be added.
Tiles: resistant to weathering and dirt. We created a mosaic for the building’s façade, depicting a pixelized image of the sky where each pixel is 30x30 centimeters (the same as the tile used). The man-made mosaic alongside the natural blue of the sky offers a point of contrast between the building and the environment.
Fired bricks /cedar pattern exposed concrete: these two materials are used on the walls of the second floor. In this open-plan space with no divisions, the difference in scale and texture between these materials offer a hint at the organization of daily activities.
Terrazzo: a material that can withstand dirt and pressure. The first floor is the working space for the family’s auto shop, and we chose to use terrazzo (2-3mm black pearl granite) for the floor and grooved tiles for the walls. These materials are quick to clean, whether they have been dirtied by oil and grease or by floodwater and sand after a summer storm.
Landing grilles: out of safety concerns, the staircases have been designed so that the visual focus is on the steps. The landings are expanded and bound by grilles, which are set back with the staircase so that the light only spills in on some afternoons, when the shadow creates an impression of the grille on the landing.
Signature: The signs on the landings conceal with wiring for the home security system. Between the monitoring camera and the opening for wires, we placed a “Wall House” signature that both neatly organizes the wires and strengthens the identity of the house.
Row House, the Inhabitancy Space,a collection of events
The lighting and ventilation is always the leading concern for typical row houses. Making the most of the deployment of circulation and building openings provides the extended row house sufficient light and enables the breeze flows in interior space. Wall House has the conceptually circulation in concept and enables human behavior, light and shade, and breeze float along with time in the extended row house.
The elevation in Taiwan urban area is quite diversified and disordered because of the signboards, standpipes, air-conditioning equipments, mechanical and electrical equipments, dove cages, street vendors on the porches. The multi-aperture architectural envelope clean up aforementioned elements and connect interior of the building with exterior world while the privacy is also preserved.
We attempt to construct the form of a kind of architectural envelope, become the shelter that the human lives, with response disorderly and diversified culture in Taiwan.
