A "First-Step" Building
Zhang Quan Ng
A "First-Step" Building
Zhang Quan Ng
A hybrid scheme designed as a transitional housing typology with minimised building footprint to fulfil two intentions — showcasing a soil friendly mechanism and engaging with the issue of loneliness in South Korea. With that in mind, two programmes are being generated in the scheme i.e. an off-grid restaurant on the ground floor with co-living residences above.
The off-grid restaurant comes with a farm on the rest of the site and advocates the food preparation through sustainable energy, pickling and fermentation. By practising multi-cropping and crop rotation on the farm, the variety of crops realises the shifting roles of fixing nitrogen, maintaining the soil’s organic carbon matter, balancing microbes, feeding decomposers, retaining water and recovering soil fertility.
The co-living units are designed as an initial instrument of reconnecting the single living people who are facing a serious issue of loneliness back to the Korean societal lifestyle. By assigning a garden balcony to each room, it provides opportunities for residents to live closely with nature. This move intends to iron out the ‘detachment of soil’ often felt by the people living in the highrise, at the same time allowing them to grow their own food — directly aiding to form a soil-friendly lifestyle.
The building is equipped with a soil-friendly operating system which is located at the first floor, encompassing the natural water purification system, eco-friendly electricity generator (converting heat energy from methane gas and solar energy from photovoltaic panels to electricity), heat exchanger and biodigester (producing methane gas and natural fertiliser). It is designed to be co-existed with a contemporary plant room hence forming a hybrid system to support the transitional scheme.
By paying homage to the traditional Korean house - hanok, the building reflects some of its important elements while integrating with contemporary intervention. For example, representing the use of timber in the glulam structural system with the highly efficient assembling method, the transformation of the clay and straw into adobe bricks as wall infill to the timber skeleton, retaining the lattice window pattern as an effective shading tool, subtle play of floor levels to generate a sense of spatial transition and hierarchy.