Apartment in Taipei, Taiwan

Multiplying space

“Humans are endowed with great versatility as a species, because we are adaptable to any kind of space.”

Design Philosophy

Designing for a specific client, always entails personalized approaches to functionality and taste. Talking with the owner of this 42m² apartment in Taiwan about his own desires and needs, made us feel that the space available was simply not enough.

Interior Layout

To accommodate the program, we made a site-specific classification of activities into “predictable”, “unpredictable” and “adaptable”. An example of space assigned to predictable activities is the kitchen and the dining table, which involve standard functions. Unpredictable activities are structured around leisure, such as watching TV, dining and having a conversation; those always involve active decision-making by the users.

Adaptable activities are the most interesting ones, considering their requirements for space: we lie down when sleeping, or sit when working and reading, but stand up when walking. Predicting the positions of a body in such a framework, provided the key to our design.

Custom Structures

This strategy was helpful but still inadequate, therefore we suggested multifunctional configurations: our design approach integrates different uses. For example, we combined the open kitchen with a rotating dining table: Besides working as a unit, they may function individually, to accommodate separate needs. So does the wall, that provides mobile storage to meet with the owner’s temporary usage needs.