brass & woodwind

When we close our eyes, sound becomes the world that we feel and learn. This design is an experimental architecture attempt to use sound as the dominant factor of plan arrangement and spatial experience of the building. Through studies of the current musical instruments, I designed an art studio that symbols a brass instrument and a woodwind instrument. The south entrances of the building serve as blowers of the tube-shaped space. The north part of the building is designed with copper material and a more fluid space feature, while the south part with cement and more rough features. The two parts of the house also symbols the different parts of lives in function arrangement. The north part applying to the brass wind instrument is used for social lives including dining hall, art studio and gallery, while the south part representing the woodwind instrument is used for private purposes including the living room, the bedroom and the study. Between the two parts, spaces are craved in to the walls as utility rooms. Along the wall between the 2 parts of the house, switches like doors and windows are designed. These switches multiply the spatial arrangement possibilities and activated to connection between two life content. The switch also serves as the sounding control device though controlling the length of air column inside and the position of vibration point in proportion of the column, thus produce different sounding effect.

Academic Studio l 2011 Fall l Art Studio/Living Space: Acoustical Experiment Location: Huanlian, Taiwan

architectural solution
The design applied the different musical mood of brass wind instruments and woodwind instrument, resembling social life in the household to brass wind and private life to woodwind. The construction material and shape differs to create different sounding effect. And between the two parts of the design, thick sandstone wall are built including utility rooms inside. With occasional openings on the wall, the two spaces find the chance to connect and exchange, as well as the two contents of life. The openings also provide more choices of space utilization adapted to human behavior.
The function of the private life including the bedroom, the living room and the entrance hall, with the most usual connection with study and dining hall of the other side of the house. The main entrance is at the south east corner facing the sea down the hill. On the north-east corner there is a water pool with vertical sounding pipes.
The roof top of the house was divided into 2 parts, indicating the function division below. Three triangle-shaped skylight windows were cut open from the roof, forming rhythmical lighting in the interior part.
Due to the mountain terrain, there’s a 2-meter height difference between the two parts of the house. The design aims to maintain this natural height difference and use multi-shaped walls to create possibilities for spatial utilization. The human behavior in the interior space is mostly defined by height differences, which in this design also serves as the division line of space functions. Differentiated heights and width of the walls invent interaction with physical body movements as well as visual connections.
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