Winter 2017—situated in the heart of downtown Taipei, Lao Wang Hot Pot seems to have inherited the streaming lights of the city. Like a torch sparkling with seduction, the restaurant’s spectral pattern creates a stage as much a visual feast as it is a culinary one.
The house owner of this project is a couple. The host of the house is an engineer and the hostess is a lawyer. They have two small children. The original house is too small to accommodate their friends, especially on the weekends, so they need a large enough common area whose style can be generally accepted by most of people.
H Academy primarily offers hairdressing courses including hair cutting, dyeing, perming etc. and make-up, nail art additionally. The plan focuses on the teaching process and how the program functions. The teaching consists of academic and practical learning. More complicated activities would be performed in practical learning, so there is only one classroom for academic and two for practical. The hairdressing procedure usually separates into two categories, the primary that takes longer duration and the minor that lasts only temporarily, such as the differences between hair cutting and washing. Thus, space for minor procedure could be shared between two practical classrooms and in turn forms a cycle to each practical classroom. In such specialized relationship of sharing, a lab box that includes washing and perming is embedded between these two classrooms. Eventually, there exists an individual lab box within the interior and becomes “a box within a box” as a layered space.
In the exhibition area, the “rational and mechanical” modular scaffolding system conducts a dialogue with the life force of the dinosaurs that is “primal and organic”. While the rough scaffolding balances out the dinosaur’s gigantic scope, the gradient of the lighting, which seems to breathe, creates a spatial concept that is contrasting yet harmonious between the cold, blue-light scaffolding and the warm, yellow-light dinosaurs. The exhibition area is like a cloud in the space, fusing with the dinosaur to become one being.
The lady of the house, who designs wedding invitations for a living, has a soul molded by plate making, compression molding, laser engraving, and hot foil stamping, has, in the fragrance brand Mad et Len, found the mesmerizing texture that came of limited and simple ease of handicraft. The space became a fragrant art, where the warmth of life become the best way to extract the smell of memory, and allows the habits of the owners, such as triathlon and reading, to become ethereal and spread into the air. The raised multi-layer bookshelf walls and display racks refines the personality and images of the residence. The simple colors and handmade work from the artisan aids the feel of the media such as hand painted and steel brushed veneer materials to replace the clean mechanical feel. On various white background materials, the line and color blocks are fermenting in minimalism, creating a division of order and spatial displacement.
Incorporating themselves into the pleasing view of a waterfront residence, the undulate waters with ripples therein pass through the semi-circular surrounding windows and become part of the vicissitudes of your daily life. Inspired by the murmuring waters outside the bright neat windows, the interior design extends swells of the rippling breakers and transforms them into attractive curves in walls, ceilings and traffic flow, symbolizing echoes to exterior waves to resemble endless stream currents, take in soft wavy lines and delicate rhythm, and replace rigid and simple squares.
Inspired with paper patterns created by fashion designers for garment making to interpret their imagination, this interior design, taking silhouettes from such patterns, starts dialogues with the young residence owner, a French educated female fashion designer. Just as dress drawings, folding and twisting in pattern making are transformed to clean-cut presentation of sharply defined copper tubing of pendant lamps hanging down from ceiling and wires braided on the glass bookcase.
This 50-year-old house is located in a high density residence area, with the typical design of three-story townhouse that you see often in Taiwan. Main problems for this rectangular shaped house include poor daylighting, which is common for houses of this specific shape, and the close proximity to neighboring houses,which poses a privacy and security threat. Also, noises from nearby tourism attractions and night markets are a nuisance.
Cursive from Cloud Gate Dance Theater, “One of the finest dance group in the world.” –credit by The Globe and Mail, is performed by dancers’ body motion to present the exquisite calligraphy. The Chinese character can best reveal the skilful of the calligrapher.
Remove the exhaustions and the defenses accumulated in daytime, the house owners change their mood at the moment they stay the independent two-door entrance space. According to the rectangle layout, the designers plan public space and private bedrooms from the entrance to the inner house, and make the best use of natural sunlight by adopting large floor-to-ceiling windows.