Concept Design: District 8. The building is a 6 story mixed-use project, comprising of office spaces for a TV broadcast company and a penthouse residence on the top 2 floors. The program is to relocate the owner’s office to this new location along with owner’s residence on the top 2 levels.  The area of the building is designed to be just under 2,000 sq.m. and 23 building height limit to apply minimum set back since the site is very small with 2 roads around the corner. Design Approach, as usual, we try to operate and organized all the factors, such as the building functions, spaces and site context and let them play their parts.  As the result, we get a wedged gable roof shape with different height at the ridge line from split levels on the top part. We just let each parts come and play their roles and not too overwhelmed. We keep them organized with simplicity of form with multiple textures or details and materials.

A steep gable roof shape is selected as a typology for residential unit on the top with large glass façade on the North for the office spaces. Vertical aluminum fins and architectural elements are applied on the western façade to provide maximum shading for the west wall. The swimming pool is a critical factor to set the residential floors. The floors are split at half level since the pool have to sit on the main floor not sinking in since the space below are needed for the office. The living space are on 2 sides of the pool with a big opening on North and South direction to take advantage of natural ventilation and light. The split levels give more privacy between the bedrooms and also the building form as stated. A less steep sloped roof is designed to cover the outdoor terrace area to give a more intimate space as a transition between 2 sides.  Solid wall of the broadcast studios are located against adjacent townhouse to give minimum set back of 2 meters. The circulation elements are set on the west of the building which is stairs and elevator to block the western sun along with existing Tamarind tree that we try to keep.

The building structure is a composite structure between concrete and steel. The top 2 floor are steel frame structure and the bottom part is concrete structure with post tension floor system. Concrete elevator core is showed as an exposed concrete wall with embedded floor numbers with reinforced concrete stairs wrap around. The glass walls along the stairs are pushed out as another skin layering over the concrete core. It is a challenge to work on the setback and building regulations to gain the most out of it. Sometimes we need to play by the rules to get something extraordinary.  Our design philosophy is not to make a strikingly irregular forms but to make a design statement with simple form with more refined details.