House without Walls / Chaoffice

House without Walls / Chaoffice

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Escape from the metropolis
The clients are a young couple, both of whom are designers. They grew tired of the plethora of urban issues which plague Beijing, much like any other major metropolis around the world. They decided to move to Jinan, a secondary city in China, which offered more space and a lower cost of living. Our first meeting together occurred before the approaching era of the pandemic, and the husband told me that for them it was not important to be based in any particular city as their work required them to travel often both domestically and abroad. Their new house would become both their home and office.

The grand table
Because of the nature of the clients work as designers, we envisioned the construction of a creative environment that contained certain characteristics that minimized the physical constraints of said environment and allowed for a variety of events to occur. Most importantly, we planned for a grand table within the new space, which would provide a place for a variety of different home and work activities. The size of the table is dictated by the standard modularized size of the materials used. 3 plywood boards with dimensions of 1.2 x 2.4 meters would be combined to create a massive 1.8 x 4.8 table.

The reformation of the discipline
Fortunately, the building structure is comprised of a system of supporting short-limb reinforced concrete shear walls, and all non-structural interior walls could be removed. When visiting the site just after completing the demolition of the existing apartment, we found that it had transformed into a cave, and the building itself became a mountain.

Occupying the cave
After the demolition was complete, there remained many traces and vestiges of the past. Besides short structural walls, the existing plumbing, heating, and electrical facilities and their related core infrastructure could not be moved. This dictated that the general location of both bathrooms would not change. We enlarged the original master bathroom and wrapped it in a series of shelves and cabinets. Instead of walls, the huge device generated ultimately functions as a separator. Beginning near the main entrance, it naturally divides the space into two parts, public and private. Those structural walls standing in the middle of the space became hidden boundaries. The expanded kitchen, versatile guest room, and chamber with grand table blurred together, and a series of semi-transparent curtains functioned as tangible, adjustable boundaries between these disparate areas.

All about saving budget
The construction budget was set at only 200,000 RMB for the entire renovation of this 130 m² apartment. A majority of  the construction would utilize on-site carpentry using birch plywood as a key material, for things like the table, bookshelves, a bed, kitchen cabinets, various furniture in the bathrooms, as well as a multi-functional double layer bed in the “guest room”. The existing concrete ceiling and structural walls were stripped of their previously applied finishings, which revealed a very unique, authentic and coarse texture as it was impossible to clean them completely. Other walls between our site and the neighboring apartments were constructed out of concrete aerated blocks, which as a material is fragile. An additional layer of gypsum plaster was used to conceal and protect these block walls. The electrical circuitry was redistributed and no longer concealed, but rather directly exposed as part of the visual environment.