TAI / The Twirl House

When asked to make a series of houses in an Eden-like location in Ao-di, Taiwan, we first feared to disturb a place kept naturally intact for centuries.  When we visited the site after a very strong typhoon, we began to understand that the site was, although naturally kept, in constant change at the micro level.  The typhoons common to the region remodel the crust of the earth, disturbing the soft vegetation and slightly manipulating the land.  On this basis, we decided to create architecture out of nature.  We designed a house that manipulates the landscape without adding anything to it.  A house in symbiosis with its environment.  A house that celebrates views and protects itself from being viewed. There was a certain paradox in being located in such a beautiful location and being surrounded by so many different architectural expressions all crammed next to each other.  Our first house had seven neighbours.  Our reaction was then to make a house that’s introverted rather then looking outwards.  A patio house.  We started looking at it as a walled donut.  We then applied the site slope to the simple shaped, which allowed for an elevated portion to view out over the beautiful landscape.  Further more we decided to embed the “donut” immediately into the landscape, erasing its presence as a volume.  Inserting Lucio Fontana-like incisions into the topography, we were left with a house that is a mixture of nature and architecture, both introverted and extroverted.