Bang Keun YOU design the Jirisan House: a red home in harmony with the natural earth toned materials

Architects: Bang Keun YOU
Location: Hamyang-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea
Year: 2014
Area: 1.830 ft²/ 170 m²
Photo courtesy: Kwang Sik JUNG
Description:

“The client’s first intention was to locate the house further down the valley; but in my eyes there was a much evident location.

Indeed locating the project site higher on the mountain, would provide a pleasant distant panorama of Cheonwangbong (Jirisan mountain’s summit), and at the same time a view over the valley and the small village. A poetic landscape picture, with colors changing every seasons, that could be peacefully contemplated through the house’s large window “frames”.

As always, if not handled with sensitivity, designing a project on a naturally virgin site can easily turn into a serious disaster. To appear legitimate among this wonderful landscape, the project had to draw from the nature’s spirit, and communicate with it.

So came the idea of an organic concept, each volumes nesting harmoniously with the surrounding environment; This harmony is by the way reinforced by the use of natural earth toned materials, inspired from Jirisan mountain’s seasonal colors.

From the entrance door, the plan layout develops from either side of the main circulation axis going upstairs.

On the right the kitchen, dining room and bathroom, opposed to living room and bedroom on the left, with large windows facing the valley view. Thereby the dynamic space is distinctly divided from the resting space.

The living room wooden floor material turns over the walls reinforcing the cocoon feel. Similar to a waggon, the different interior spaces are connected in one single homogenous entity, covered with a copper fabric.”