House of Soft Boundaries: A One-House, Two-Home Living Experiment for Three Generations

The client requested a house that would allow his mother and his own family to live together while maintaining privacy—a home defined by “loose boundaries.” Leaving their former mixed-use residence, they relocated to Yongam-ri in Byeollae, seeking a setting close enough to the city yet immersed in gardens, farmland, and open sky. The site offered the ideal condition for three generations to coexist within nature.

To accommodate differing daily rhythms, the program was divided functionally. A studio-type residence for the mother occupies the ground floor, while a two-story duplex for the client’s family forms a separate mass. Though physically distinct, the two volumes share a central core—including the entrance and service spaces—allowing the house to operate as one household with two independent dwellings. A corridor-like shared zone on the first floor functions as a spatial buffer: when doors are open, the house reads as one continuous home; when closed, it becomes two fully independent residences.

The second-floor duplex contains a family living room and an auxiliary space overlooking the landscape—a quiet refuge where light and time can be experienced slowly. Horizontal louvers, calibrated to the seasonal angle of the sun, provide natural shading during the summer months. The structure is designed as a wood light-frame system, incorporating passive-house-level insulation and a heat recovery ventilation system to ensure both comfort and energy efficiency. The exterior is finished in light-gray long bricks, laid in alternating flush and recessed courses to create subtle depth and shifting shadow patterns. As the sun moves, the façade reveals changing expressions—materializing the passage of time.

Ultimately, Double House is an architectural response to a way of living: together, yet apart. It delicately balances distance and connection between generations, becoming both a spatial experiment and a vessel for a family’s chosen philosophy of life.