The site for IMA lacks sun access, ventilation and privacy. It is 50sqm in the city centre, walled up on all sides except where directly facing high traffic. Being a heritage building means little can be done with existing building envelop.
What does it mean to live in the busiest part of town?
One, life within the house is closely knitted with the life on the street. How do we create a filter between the public and private lives- to enhance the liveliness, downplay the chaos; enjoy the connectedness, harness the privacy? The building is the mechanism which filters, which cannot be achieved with blunt division. The building envelop is layered with steel mesh, glass, fabric, and washipaper upon one another, seemingly exaggerated the hardly-existing physical distance between street and inside, lengthening the journey from public realm into the private. The layers are transparent/ translucent, giving control to amount of visibility and light entering and exiting the house; they also wrap the internal space with delicate softness.
Two, scarcity of nature. (a) light – Roof of IMA consists of layers of translucent material, reduces the harshness of direct sunlight whilst illuminating the entire house with diffused, quiet natural light. The house is vertically penetrated with 2 lightwells, bringing light from top to bottom of the house. (b) air – within the house, there is no definitive “room” bound by walls and doors. Spatial divisions are controlled at 2.1m high, above which is left to remain free flowing and continuous, where air is circulated throughout the 3 floors. This free-flowing continuity also allows one to sense space beyond the immediate surrounding, creating the illusion of airiness. The lightwells further enhance verticality within the house, giving relieve by creating expansion. (c) outdoor – the entire site was fully built upon, leaving no outdoor space other than the balcony. If we cannot have outdoor, why not make the indoor more like outdoor? On the top level, a sliver of the roof was carved out along the edge to invite the sky in, creating opportunity for vertical garden and outdoor bath. Through the glass wall and roof, the vertical garden seems to grow into the house, assimilating the top floor to a greenhouse, an undefined place between definitive indoor/ outdoor.
Three, functionality of small floorplate. In IMA, functions are interchangeable between spaces. Although currently configured as a residence with workshop, essentially every floor is treated as one open space. Every space can be a workspace/ sleep space/ living space, through manipulation of the building fabric; the layout makes no suggestion to its functionality.
“IMA” - meaning “now” in Japanese. It also means “living room”.
The result building itself is a microcosm; through interacting with the building fabric and choices of functions at different parts of the building, the inhabitants are nomads within the miniature world of IMA, carrying out their day to day activities. IMA seeks to reconnect one with even the most delicate of changes in weather, accentuating the realization of “living, now”.
photo : Tom Ferguson
The primary Asian garden design principle is “view borrowing”, which can be roughly broken into 5 types: from afar, from neighbour, from above, from below, from time.
With architectural elements of the dwelling house, we have screened out the unwanted, framed the wanted; tall eucalyptus and palm trees from afar, native plantation from adjoining public park, fig tree peeping over the fence from above, sky reflected in the pond from below, and changing colours of the private pocket gardens from time… adding layers and depth of perception of nature for this dwelling within the city context. Blurring the boundary between private gardens and public park, we have created the illusion of being IN the park.
Work under Facet Studio
photo : Tom Ferguson
Work under Facet Studio
photo: Tom Ferguson
When emptiness means the ultimate luxury.
With primary residence at the most densely populated city on the planet, the client travels to Sydney regularly to decompress. The entire apartment faces to the majestic Sydney Harbour Bridge in such proximity, that I wanted the Bridge to greet the client upon arrival: “Yes you are home; yes you can relax now.”
Hence I have removed any permanent internal partitioning which may obscure the purity of the Bridge. Here all functions are packed neatly out of sight, and will only be revealed when they are on call. The pushing and pulling of the functions added layers of program in the one space, almost multiplied the same space many times over, introducing a flexibility ranging from a single person’s abode to party venue hosting 30 or more people, satisfying the client’s needs as a private and social being.
Work under Facet Studio
photo: Tom Ferguson
A House is an immediate response to the effect of time. Old tired houses became dilapidated as their owners aged and passed away, in search for new owners to give them a new lease of life - and why not?
Old structures are more than capable to provide shelter and pleasure for generations to come, without completely giving up the traces time has lovingly inscribed on them.
photo : Olivia Shih
Work under Facet Studio
photo: Robert Walsh
Work under Facet Studio
photo: Tomohiro Sakashita
Work under Facet Studio
photo: Andrew Chung
一個給成年人的家。
自然光是這個狹長的，位於市中心的房子的最大挑戰。它除了面對馬路的一面其它全都被鄰接的建築物封死了。
天窗將太陽帶進房子的深處，那是穿插於不同樓層的主要樓梯所在的地方。自然光同時也扮演了”隔離器“的角色，為房子裡各個房間創造出距離及隱私的錯覺。
Family house for adults.
Natural light access was challenging for this narrow inner city house, with all sides up against its neighbours except for the street front.
Skylights bring the sun into the deep of the house, where the main circulation stair winds through the levels. The natural light also acts as the separator, creating sense of distance and privacy between the rooms.
Photos : Katherine Lu
work under Facet Studio
image: Facet Studio
work under Facet Studio
image: Facet Studio
work under Facet Studio
image: Facet Studio
work under Facet Studio
image: Facet Studio
