The client’s needs – The client is a family with three children. They wanted to provide ancillary income by renting out the lower floors for commercial use alongside their own residence in the city center. In a dense surrounding context of 3-4 story buildings, the building needed to be different and special, with a public area for commerce and a private area for the family, while at the same time being different from its surroundings, as they believed this would make their home more special and the rental more profitable.
The architect’s strategy – The architect convinced the clients of what is special. The architect proposed that the building should not stand out by being different from its surroundings and attract attention, but rather appear as a defamiliarization amongst the familiarity of its surroundings. He borrowed Viktor Shklovsky’s concept of ‘defamiliarization’. Just as the feeling of defamiliarization does not come from the new, but from the familiar, the ‘unfamiliar appearance’ starts from the everyday appearance of the neighborhood.
Jisan-dong 989-6 is an architectural composition that is a contemporary interpretation of the neighborhood in a way of defamiliarization. The composition is composed of the forms of the surrounding buildings, which are uniformed by the restrictions of regulations, the gable roofs built in different ways over time, the horizontal elevations created by the balconies and terrace extensions of the surrounding buildings, and the unfamiliar feeling of material thickness. This composition recalls the sense of an everyday neighborhood that is no longer unfamiliar and restores its original freshness.
The form – The legal daylighting restriction does not apply below the third floor and 9m in height, so all neighbor buildings have a three-floor volume and roof. Jisan-dong 989-6 uses the restriction on sunlight rights, with a bold roof and a two-story volume, creating an unfamiliar sense of proportion, while the generous ground floor makes the neighborhood more welcoming.
The roof – Inspired by the roof shapes of various neighboring buildings that have been layered over time, the gabled roof responds to its surroundings with a minimalist flatness and three bends, creating an unfamiliar sense of proportion.
Horizontal elevation – The horizontal elevation, created by the balcony and terrace extensions of the neighboring residential buildings, is another motif of the building, acting as an important functional, proportional, and decorative division between the lower and upper floors.
Density of volume – The unusual thickness of the envelope of the surrounding buildings, created by placing windows as far outwards as possible to maximize interior space, obscures the sense of thickness of the material and creates an unfamiliar feeling of building density. In this project, all the envelopes are laid flat to create an unfamiliar feeling of the weight of the material.
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Cite: “jisan-dong 989-6 defamiliarization house / 09A” 02 Dec 2024. ArchDaily. Accessed .
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