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Giyeon-ga mixed-use building/Todot Architects and Partners
Text description provided by the architect. The site facing the road in Xizong District is narrow and becomes wider as you go deeper. The narrow side of the site is a weak point for commercial purposes. Fortunately, the neighborhood is dominated by vehicles rather than pedestrians, so we imagined the various images the project would provide as vehicles pass by. It presents different impressions from different angles of the road, while its flexible curvature draws the eye deep into the site. The surface of the facade is sometimes smooth, sometimes rough, and sometimes uneven, with a drum-shaped outline. Even the smooth façade transitions into a series of louvered columns that control and mitigate the transmission of daylight into the interior. We hoped that such an unconventional building mass would promote unexpected interactions within the site.
The project is a mixed-use building consisting of a cafe, offices and multi-family residences. Rather than sacrificing each project for one another, we designed each project with enough isolation from each other and provided each project with quality outdoor space to extend each project beyond its indoor environment. Each outdoor space offers a different atmosphere; sometimes it is covered with artificial grass, sometimes with natural stone, sometimes with rough stucco. The empty space serves as a “container” for experiencing the surrounding natural elements such as rivers, skies and mountains, and is quickly filled with the inhabitants’ plants, furniture and memories.
The third floor is one of the multifamily housing units. A large porch or patio serves as a courtyard in front of a detached house. We want to provide these multifamily units with the amenities that a home would provide. The bedroom is directly connected to the porch and wooden bench. This cave-like space is private and tranquil, yet open to the south.
The fourth floor is another multifamily unit. A series of windows in the hallway resemble picture frames hanging on a gallery wall, as each window frame offers a different picture. As sunlight passes through the windows, they cast a row of various shadows on the floor.
The name of the project, “Giyeon-ga,” which means “House with Strange Encounters,” stems from the hope that many strange encounters and relationships will form on the site as a result of the project’s design elements. Perhaps, people attracted by the concrete curve will sit on the bench at the end of the curve and chat while drinking coffee bought from the cafe, triggering another strange encounter.
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