A Retreatful Ryokan Home

Special attention is paid to adopt this traditional Japanese architectural concepts into Hong Kong’s relatively hot and humid climate. For the project located at the ground floor of the building with 3 sides of the walls exposing to the outdoor area, there will be a significant difference in indoor temperature & humidity levels during different times of the day, which would not be suitable for wood material to be used in order to sustain from this situation.

Wood tiles are used in general for easy maintenance, with a sunken floor area Genkan to keep the shoes on a different level from the general living space. Apart from the necessary wood features, general storage spaces are finished with wood pattern plastic laminate to resist against the humidity.

The impression on Hong Kong’s architecture & interior is always on its high rise buildings & densely packed blocks. While if we see a bit beyond this urban fabric, there are still a lot of relaxing area happening around the core, which gives a very different perspectives of Hong Kong’s living style. This project is a special type of living space called Village House. Having an advantage of highly flexible internal layout with super simple structure of the building, transforming the typical layout arrangement of this unit can introduce a different way of spatial usage & living pattern of Hong Kong.

Setting the kitchen counter in the heart of the house is unconventional setup in Hong Kong with the limitation of mechanical conditions in high-rise buildings. For this project in a village house on ground floor, all those technical situation can be solved and so as to facilitate this out of the box arrangement, generating different spatial qualities and possibilities. The layout configurations in this size of apartments in general starts with 2-bedroom or 3-bedroom units. With the trend of city-living shifting & changing quickly these years, especially with the Covid situation, turning a lot of people into a “work from home” employee. This project suggests a lot of possibilities to suit different kinds of situations from leisure, family gatherings, care taking, chilling, to home working. We believe this could be an example of demonstrating how daily living can be assisted with the carefully pre-planned spaces and transformable elements.