The Daeyang Gallery and House by Steven Holl Architects was awarded the Jury award in the Residential: Single Family Home category  for the Architizer A+ Awards. See all the winners here.

Despite the advertising, it’s easy to forget that the Daeyang Gallery and House is both a gallery and a house. “I have worked on several private residences where the challenge was to make housing the art collection the primary aim,” says Steven Holl, the building’s architect. “Clients asked that the domestic space be inspiring, but not the primary [force] in this balance.” It’s this balance of program that’s entirely present in the Daeyang complex, a 10,700 square-foot compound in the hills of Seoul’s tony Kangbuk neighborhood. Click for more.

Seen from above, the project appears as a composition of interlocking jigsaw pieces fitted together. The geometry of the plan was inspired by an obscure musical sketch for the piece “Symphony of Modules” by the composer Istvan Anhalt, which Holl fortuitously discovered in a John Cage book. In the drawing, bars of music are circumscribed in accommodating geometric outlines, three in total. Holl used these shapes as the footprint of each of the compound’s multiple components: tiny archipelago formations are joined together by a central pool, almost sea-like in its magnetic force.

What seems to be a vacation-home indulgence is actually a thin film of water masking a roof plane punched with skylights; the water diffuses falling light, which then passes through the glass voids down into a lower-level gallery. The dappled light animates the gallery’s white walls and granite floors, imbuing them with the gossamer of the seasons.

Three pavilions—an entry hall, a living residence, and an event space—cut through the shallow pool, squat angular modules with copper-clad walls and glass enclosures seemingly half-submerged in the perfectly still water. The textured red patina of the cladding and the glass’s prismatic glare, along with the site’s vegetation and the milky sky, are reflected in the pool basin—what Holl says calls “a natural mirror for the life floating over the foundation of art.” The space evinces “utopic” feelings for Holl, a place where the elements and architecture are unified, however briefly, in a moment of reflective calm.

Istvan Anhalt’s sketch for “Symphony of Modules”

Holl’s initial sketch for the plan of the Daeyang complex

All photos: Iwan Baan; drawings: Steven Holl Architects

The Daeyang Gallery and House by Steven Holl Architects was awarded the Jury award in the Residential: Single Family Home category  for the Architizer A+ Awards. See all the winners here.

Despite the advertising, it’s easy to forget that the Daeyang Gallery and House is both a gallery and a house. “I have worked on several private residences where the challenge was to make housing the art collection the primary aim,” says Steven Holl, the building’s architect. “Clients asked that the domestic space be inspiring, but not the primary [force] in this balance.” It’s this balance of program that’s entirely present in the Daeyang complex, a 10,700 square-foot compound in the hills of Seoul’s tony Kangbuk neighborhood. Click for more.

Seen from above, the project appears as a composition of interlocking jigsaw pieces fitted together. The geometry of the plan was inspired by an obscure musical sketch for the piece “Symphony of Modules” by the composer Istvan Anhalt, which Holl fortuitously discovered in a John Cage book. In the drawing, bars of music are circumscribed in accommodating geometric outlines, three in total. Holl used these shapes as the footprint of each of the compound’s multiple components: tiny archipelago formations are joined together by a central pool, almost sea-like in its magnetic force.

What seems to be a vacation-home indulgence is actually a thin film of water masking a roof plane punched with skylights; the water diffuses falling light, which then passes through the glass voids down into a lower-level gallery. The dappled light animates the gallery’s white walls and granite floors, imbuing them with the gossamer of the seasons.

Three pavilions—an entry hall, a living residence, and an event space—cut through the shallow pool, squat angular modules with copper-clad walls and glass enclosures seemingly half-submerged in the perfectly still water. The textured red patina of the cladding and the glass’s prismatic glare, along with the site’s vegetation and the milky sky, are reflected in the pool basin—what Holl says calls “a natural mirror for the life floating over the foundation of art.” The space evinces “utopic” feelings for Holl, a place where the elements and architecture are unified, however briefly, in a moment of reflective calm.

Istvan Anhalt’s sketch for “Symphony of Modules”

Holl’s initial sketch for the plan of the Daeyang complex

All photos: Iwan Baan; drawings: Steven Holl Architects