Ivory Home / Lee Jae Architects

Ivory House / Lee Jae Architects

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Text description provided by the architects. This house is a single-family, detached house of 36pyung Type built-in Ilsan, Gyeonggi province. A young couple decided to move into a quiet, peaceful place from the city for their expected baby. Ivory house is for the three-member family; it consists of the main living room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, dress room, kitchen and workroom in 119.04㎡ of the floor. 

Ivory House is located at the end of the housing complex which already had been built with a number of single-family houses. Also, Ivory House is surrounded by mountains, nearer to nature, which helps you to experience the beauty of nature more directly. The land feature of Ivory House is a wide land of long and narrow square-shaped of 6x25m. Maximizing the feature of the land to the maximum, Ivory House intends to enable endless interactions with the surrounding landscape. 

The goal of Ivory House is to achieve the traditional beauty of Korea and frame of architecture by representing modern design and meeting requests from the surrounding environment. Also, it is to create harmony within the pastoral landscape, not standing out from the surrounding environment, even though it consists of the simplest volume and modern, Western appearance. The inside is designed to protect privacy from the outside; it connects the indoor environment by creating a flexible connection between inside and outside apart from the outside. It is intended to let residents feel comfortable within the house while continuously interacting with nature. 

The outer finishing of the Ivory House was completed with a bit rough mortar rendering by spreading the mortar itself on the wall. Furthermore, through a couple of color tests, the best fitting color was found. Residents approach the porch by following the movement along the straight line. The porch was located at the spot where the light stays for the longest, establishing the first impression of the house “you walk home under the warm light”. 

As you enter the house through the porch, the size and location of the opening part create an intimate relationship with the surrounding natural environment. It is to enable changes in sequences according to the movement. Windows are installed at places where your eyes stay; it allows openness inside and draws the surrounding nature into inside. It was intentionally designed to apply the concept of ‘one step, one view’ of Korean Traditional House. Especially, the front windows hugely open to southern and south-western directions carry the view of four seasons along the hallways as a panoramic scene. Residents can enjoy the change in viewpoint by their movements. 

Furthermore, the first floor leads the main functions of the house onto the ground from guest rooms, living room, kitchen and dining place making the connection between inside and outside natural. It is why the inside can be naturally connected to the outside through the doors within. Within the house, there are three small courtyards the floor materials of inside and courtyards are the same, which creates the natural flow of space while the ambiguous atmosphere of the inside and outside space. The spatial installation of Ivory House can be considered the natural result by responding to the requests of the building owner and the surrounding environment. 

For the interior inside, it tries to minimize the differences in the height of the floor by drawing attention to various directions. Also, by installing the whole, big size glass window, it tries to the expansion of the space. The front window provides not only the view itself but accepts an enormous amount of energy from the Sun into the house. It is designed to maintain privacy and to stay open to the outside at the same time. Moreover, the interior finished white on the whole house led the natural light to be reflected inside, showing off the soft light, leading the effect of approaching into the surrounding landscape closer. Ivory House has housed a complex-cultural landscape on the north and a natural landscape on the south, creating a clear distinction.