Guest House Rivendell / IDMM Architects

© Joon Hwan Yoon

Architects: IDMM Architects

Location: Gapyeong-gun, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea

Area: 721 sqm

Year: 2012

Photographs: Joon Hwan Yoon

     

Structural Engineer: S.D.M Partners

Construction: Jehyo E&C

Mechanical Engineer: GK MEC

Electric Engineer: Kukdong

Landscape: STUDIO terra

Text: Kwak, Hee Soo

© Joon Hwan Yoon

From the architect. Among its many types, residential architecture is extremely limited when it comes to

experimentation. Who would want to live like a guinea pig in highly private space in which his or her life

unfolds? In order to weigh up the singularity of the architecture of a residential building, the search for

relationships between spaces could be a better approach than searching for ‘newness’.

First Floor Plan

Relationships between the building’s layout and the land upon which it stands, and the way in which it fits

in among the buildings around it are to be interrogated. The Guesthouse Rivendell sits on a plot that

measures 3300㎡, a size rather large for a house. The architect has been careful, therefore, to position

the structures so as to avoid making the house look too small and the leaving the rest of the site looking

like a desert.

© Joon Hwan Yoon

Perhaps the way its body spreads out like limbs in every direction, too, is a way of dividing up the large

plot and making the outer surface of the building as large as possible. Sequence is an important concept

when it comes to this building. Unlike that of conventional house, this building’s upper and lower parts are

divided and its long lines of flow extend like unraveling spools of thread.

© Joon Hwan Yoon

The view placed over this building’s sequence, then, is interrupted and divided. It is difficult to rate it as a

new principle in architecture or an experimental home. When you go inside the house and look outwards,

however, you will have a sense of how the one thing in the world that we never tire of seeing is the exotic

effect of nature and the architecture that mediates it: anew perception of nature as its familiarity breaks up

like a glass bead; witnessing nature as it changes at every moment and in every place.