Swallow House / UrbanCarve

Architects: UrbanCarve
Area: 284 m²
Year: 2016
Photographs: mwphotoinc

Text description provided by the architects. The client is an elderly couple, retired from Taipei, wants to begin their new life at their country hometown, Yilan. They, who grew up at Jhuangwei, Yilan, has great nostalgia for the sloping black terracotta roof, red brick walls, and the scenic view of Gueishan Island's. Their experience, the small road wandering through the rice field and the passage across the watering ditch, has been discussed constantly and become the core of this project’s concept, related to home.

Design Strategy

- Glazed gable void

By shifting two solid masses backwards and forwards, a void is generated and set as the core of a “home”. It functions as household alter of family’s ancestor. And we want to redefind this space’s relations in Taiwan’s family.

-The Rooftop overlooking Gueishan Island

Through the ritual of drinking teas and appreciating the sun rising, we want the client to live again in the nature. Architecturally, we create several roof terraces to provide various sceneries, such as the rice field, the mountain in the distance, and the sun rising from the sea horizon.

- The portrait of home

In architectural design, we imagined the house as an abstract swallows’ nest, so the characteristic feature can be identified in the vast rural field, from far away. And more to the function of these two shifting solid masses, which are planned for client’s two sons to inhabit, it is generated a flowing space that is more flexible and can be multi-functioned.

- Integrated landscape and spatial experience

There are the wandering small country roads, the irrigating ditches amidst the paddy rice field, and the rolling hills in the distant, which we transform into a spatial experience: the curvilinear staircase in the living room, suspended platform along the axis on which one can sit on or lie down, the stairs changing with the gables, and the attic space shaped by the folding walls. All these elements integrate together and generate another spatial experience.

- The use of light-well motivating the flow of the space

Designed strategically, we shifting the viewpoint to make the space more interesting and have the quality of flowing. Therefore, the light-well on the top of the balcony, the skylight atop the attic, and the clerestory of the household alter all increase the fowling quality.