Davide Macullo Architects is an international architecture and design studio based in Lugano, Southern Switzerland.
Studio di architettura in Ticino, Svizzera.
Set in the urban area of the city of Seoul the site is characterized by a dense, low rise building, residential area. The presence of a preserved natural park adjacent to the plot on the south confers to this site an extraordinary potential being a gateway between urban and natural landscape. The proposed building take care of this condition designing a three-dimensional filter with sequences of voids and volumes, as a metaphor of leaves, that makes it breathing towards the natural landscape and becomes a precise image, reminding to a tree growing from the hard soil of the street, towards the urban landscape. It is a townhouse that grows, with a geometric design but in an organic way, from the city towards the green hill. A stoned tree as a kind of prehistoric presence that marks the limit of the urban texture. The building appears as unfinished, growing presence who’s ideal edges are joined through the perception of the viewer. The omission of frames reminds to abstract painting in global terms, as well to the definition of Korea’s traditional space in “The Traditional Space” – by Yim Seock Jae – Ewha Womans University Press – 2005: “Korea’s traditional space can be summed in two words – emptiness and formlessness. They also represent the traditional mindset of the Korean people. Emptying and non-definitiveness are incorporated in the teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, and are core values of the latter two.”
The basement, open to the street host the entrance both for people and cars. The three upper floors are part of the single family house as three independent and communicating units granting intimacy and dialogue one the others. Large terraces allow a set back of the glazed parts and an extension of the living spaces towards the surrounding landscape privileging the natural context and in the same time create a kind of microclimate as protection of the internal spaces from the atmosphere. The roof terrace brings the people up to a level from where they can enjoy two extreme different conditions: a spectacular view of the city of Seoul that extend itself as a kind of living carpet and the extraordinary calm of the green hill.
