Skinspace by AND

A wall of wooden scales folds through the glazed facade of this house and studio that Korean architects AND designed for an artist in South Korea.

As the panels emerge behind the glass they begin to separate from one another, creating a series of openings that permit views across from the double height studio to the living quarters behind.

The wall also curves upward to wrap and conceal a bedroom on the first floor.

The two-storey-high exterior walls are constructed from concrete and nestle against a hillside that climbs up behind the house.

Here’s some more text from AND:

Skinspace

Artist + Painting

An artist walks into the office, introducing himself with a pamphlet of his paintings. Vivid colors and forced brush strokes that densely filled the screens shows his sensibility and thoughts. His use of unfamiliar words to describe his works that he is “interested in ecological theology,” illustrates the naïve mind of the artist that he paints from himself, or he paints himself through the painting. Perhaps, that is why his recent works include a body of a person in a landscape. The body, rather than being separated as a distinctive object, is depicted as part of the aggregated elements of the surrounding landscape where the trees, bushes, and the sky respond to each other blurring the boundary. What he depicts here is not a moment’s phenomenal state; rather it is the deconstruction of the object as a monad, at the same time, it is about things become an integrated being united with the surroundings.

Studio + Nature

The artist has been working at home for more than ten years. The subjects of his paintings are nothing special but spaces of his daily life. He has been constantly projecting his gaze at the parks nearby, streets, a small village in a countryside where he often visits. As seen from his recent exhibition titles, ‘A Talk with a Tree,’ ‘Thinking Forest,’ there is no clear boundary between human and nature in his paintings. Furthermore, the distinction between a body and its surroundings, or interior and exterior is only allusive.

What is clearly revealed is the flow of continuous matter waves and powerful forces that fill the space. A quotation found from his note explains everything, “Molecules think, too.” As an alternative to the Modernist’s ontology that separates man and nature, body and reason, and that postulates a certain dominant structure, his studio explores the world of wholeness. His studio shall reflect his world view. Then the real question is how one constructs an ambiguous field that interior is blurred with exterior, nature permeates into the space, and the artist’s gaze spills out to the nature.

Skin + Space

To the north of the site is a 4 meter high sloped hill, and the site is open towards all three sides. First, a long façade stands on the south of the site and overlooks a stream. The skin of the façade is gently rolled inward as it breaks up the boundary between the interior and the exterior. The rolled in surfaces lift up as they enter the interior and they traverse the interior toward the opposite side of the wall. During the crossing, the panels of the skin are split and distorted, creating loose crevices.

The landscape permeates through the crevice, and so does light. The light colors the space with every moment in time. As a body moves, the space of the crevice changes sensitively. Skin becomes space, and space becomes skin. The boundary is blurred, and the flow that passes through the interior and the exterior becomes denser.

Site: Seohoori, Seojongmyun, Yangpyeonggun, Gyeonggido, Korea
Construction Area: 112.62m2
Gross Area: 130.60m2

Structure: RC

Project Year: 2010
Designed and Constructed by AND