Star Atlas Apartment
A Home That Can Breathe
In essence, the role of a house is to resist potential dangers and uncertainties from the external natural environment, like a shell holding people inside. In this safe shell, mankind has invented the element of walls to distinguish different functional zones. However, the existence of walls also results in a lack of communication and interaction between different functional spaces, and often makes spaces seem to be dull and uninteresting.
In the Star Atlas Apartment project, we attempted to change the rigid layout of interior spaces, and reconsidered the element of walls in a more flexible and open spatial layout. Thus, enclosed walls become an element that can open and close freely and even be concealed and disappear, enabling different functional spaces to interconnect and penetrate each other and thus transform from separate spaces into an organic whole. Then, the home seems to be able to breathe, where not only interior spaces are interconnected, but also the boundary between interior and exterior spaces is blurred.
Freely Flowing Spaces along a Circular Circulation
The apartment located in LONGFOR · STAR ATLAS in Songjiang New City of Shanghai is a typical penthouse, the whole space of which is not blocked by any pillar or partition wall and provides great potential for a new spatial layout. Besides, the apartment is surrounded by glass curtain walls externally, through which the landscape lake surface comes directly in sight, with extremely good lighting and views. On this basis, we set a circular circulation along the outermost side of the apartment, arranged all functional zones in the middle, and partitioned different functional zones with open transitional spaces, to create a planar layout of a large circular circulation embracing several smaller ones and a free flexible spatial layout pattern for the apartment, while guaranteeing the transparency of spaces beside windows.
Concealable Walls
The new apartment contains four major functional zones, namely the hallway, the master bedroom suite, the living and dining space, as well as the multi-functional zone concurrently as a guest bedroom. The master bedroom suite and the multi-functional zone require privacy to some extent, but to avoid separation between spaces, we introduced the concept of concealable walls, using two sets of inserted sliding door systems between the master bedroom and the hallway, and two sets of folding door systems between the living space and the multi-functional space in place of common walls, to ensure that walls can be closed when privacy is needed but kept open most of the time.
Spaces Highlighting a Sense of Ceremony
As the start of the space, the hallway gives a strong sense of ceremony visually. On both sides of the entrance are open cabinets, which are symmetric along the hallway, providing large storage spaces while playing a role in guiding the line of sight, and the statue at the end of the hallway puts an end to the line of sight. The guest bathroom is arranged in the center of the two nested squares shaped hallway, as an auxiliary space, which provides two longitudinal passages for the hallway to connect the living room and the master bedroom.
On the north of the hallway is an open living and dining space, where a sofa is placed as a main part on the central axis of the circular circulation. The hanging television faces the whole open space, meeting the functional need of watching it at the cooking and dining zone and the sofa zone. The coffee table and the side table customized with natural stone echo each other, enhancing the sense of rhythm in the whole space.