This project is a single-family house on a site, where a part of a tenement house was separated and demolished. Therefore, the site is long and thin with a width of 7.5m and depth of 30m which is like ‘a bed for an eel’.

Usually, you advance a typical courtyard on a site like this, but this time Hearth Architects decided to make a floor plan with a front garden and a rear garden instead of a typical courtyard that separates the space because the surrounding environment is an open space. Then they made an intermediate space (a rich empty space).

While creating an externally closed space in consideration of privacy, studio let in light and created a staging (changes felt by the five senses) in which the shade of light changes depending on the season and time of day, by installing skylights and high sidelights.

In addition, by designing the alleyways and semi-outdoor spaces as if they were designing a city or townscape rather than a house, they were able to create a rich space that makes the most of the intermediate areas (the various connections and depths between inside and outside) while maintaining functionality. The lean and calm space, which is full of nature, will give an extraordinary feeling to the client’s everyday life.