The most challenging point for this project is the site.  It is located right in the middle of Bangkok city, a high-income neighborhood, where there is less sense of neighboring relationships.  It means that privacy concern is highly required around here.  The surroundings are like this: The south side is a 5-meter-wide road. On the East is a shared alley.  And the rest are surrounded by private properties.  It is an irregular rectangular shape 8.20 meters wide at the front and narrowed down to 7.70 meters along the length of 26.50 meters. This is a very peculiar shape for a house design.   So, when compared to the 450-sq.m. requirements for 5 family members as well as the regulations of setbacks and height controls, it is apparent that the house will be narrow (only 5.50 meters in width), tall, and long.

 

Consequently, the design of this house begins with finding out the best relationship between the staircase placements and the functions that are laid across the plan.  When looking closely at the first level plan, the staircase is put at the front to give more space at the back.  But then from the second floor onward, the main staircase is shifting to be in the middle instead because it defines the house plan relationship of the front and the back more appropriately.  

In terms of section design, we insist that the house should have shared vertical spaces between floors.  This allows the natural light and ventilation to get into the house as well as it creates visual relationships among family members.  Therefore, we introduce two different kinds of vertical space: (1) Double volume kind of space, the interior interlocking space, and (2) Outdoor open well, the exterior kind of space, as for the planters and pocket balconies.

 

Due to the peculiar shape and form of the building, it requires a strong idea to make a good exterior look from street views and neighbors; otherwise, it may be visual pollution for the neighborhood.  Hence, we decided to apply the idea of clothing design to treat the elevations; that is to say, we tend to consider the exterior surfaces of the house as a dress that has different textural qualities and good composition.   To do so, we categorize the exterior surfaces into 2 kinds: 

(1) The one that wraps the form of the building, or the main outer skin, we take it like the major fabric of a dress.  This surface is well composed of horizontal patterns and vertically scratched texturing details.  The special quality about it is the fact that it has different intensities of the scratched textures from the top down to the bottom to create the gradian of the building surface when it catches the light.

  (2) The other kind of surface, or skin, appears around the open wells or carved spaces for balconies.  It wraps the semi-outer space, or it gets closer to the interior space.  It is like a sub-fabric inside of a dress.  So, it must have a very smooth surface and darker color, as opposed to the outer skin. 

The edging detail between these two kinds of surfaces is then like the seam or the stitch in clothing.  Not only does it stress the change of surface characteristics, but it also defines the outlines of the building form.  

One last consideration about the elevations is how the openings are treated.  Since the openings have to follow the functions inside and they may appear here and there across the entire building, we have specifically taken them as the visual composition of pockets, holes, patches, or even buttons in clothing design.  With this strategy, we believe that the house will have its unique personality.