Connected house

Yes! Thanks to the advanced communication technology we have nowadays, we all enjoy ourselves in this unprecedented frictionless space, where information speeds; light ray flies; and distances between people shrink to the minimum. In our era, digital communication becomes oxygen; on the internet, we can talk to billions of strangers with no barrier! However, when virtual networking is overwhelming in our daily lives, do we know that traditional connections that we once had with our families, our nature and our community are also fading out silently at the same time?

In 2004, 13 millions of Chinese people are running in their full gear towards this piece of wonderland, many of them will more or less face the same problem: the disconnection from real time real space communications. We undoubtedly need something to hold these basic tidings back in the Chinese society before losing them. New design of living space could be an answer!

"cooking" becomes "dinning" becomes "living"
Unfair! If we look at the schedule of the three family members in a Dual Income Single Child family, we can quickly spot out that mother incurs the most! Electrical appliances like dish washing machine, automatic floor cleaning robot and many more of them do help a lot, but cooking is still an indispensable task that has to be done solely by mother herself! Every evening after work, while both the child and the husband are busy with their internet and newspaper, she has to come in and out of the kitchen for preparing the dinner. Gathering time for them has already been so scarce but it is still wasted in such a way! Even during the dinner, the television would be switched on and become a focus of the whole dinning activity…

How about cooking together before dinning? A dinning table which also acts as a cooking table could turn the kitchen inside out! Three of them cook together before they eat, so everyone can think of what they would like to have and share the burden of the exhausting mother; so cooking becomes a family activity that everybody can get involved; so space can be saved from dividing a kitchen from dinning room! Chinese have a long history on their dinning culture; lots of knowledge such as table manner and filial piety is taught on a dinning table, so a dinner in a Chinese family should be carefully organised. Self cooking can also nurture independent character for easily spoiled single child. Family members know the taste of each other better! Focus would also be shifted from the television to the dinner itself, family members communicate with each other interactively, rather then silently enjoying the one way communication from the TV.

Embracing the green
Modern Chinese families have been away from the nature for a long time already. A small balcony is not enough for compensation. We need to modify their homes a bit, so that the whole house can make contact with the nature, so that every member in the family can communicate with the natural environment directly!

Embracing the green and let it fill up the centre of the home! Every part of the house becomes an outdoor pavilion. Plant a tree in the middle of this small garden, keep a sheep inside; let them grow with the single child! It provides companion, creates memory, and teaches the younger generation: nature is around us.

Let your home tells who you are!
We may be too used to be anonymous both on the internet and in the modern urban residential blocks. We are losing our characters inside the city. Unlike the traditional Chinese courtyard houses which can be recognised easily from one to another according to their sizes and decorations, modern Chinese families are no longer special, they are just families that passively packed inside the massive living complex. To initiate a dialogue with our community, shall we move one step forward first to express ourselves?

Allow your homes to speak! In this design, the form of the house can vary from single child families to even single parent families, the skin of the house can be characterised, changed with your style, the provision of a chimney is also an indicator of your family dinner time, so that when smoke comes out, everyone around knows that your whole family is cooking! Besides serving as a chimney, the upward sloping mass is also an access to the rooftop, which leads the family to a platform for neighbourhood communications. Fathers play chess, Mothers hang clothes, and children watch stars together! A picture of a harmonic society is depicted.

The design of the house is aiming at reinforcing the old tidings that we are going to lose in this world of technology, and I named it, as the connected house.

Comments by juries

Alessandro Mendini : Without sacrificing the basic image of the building the house uses an expression of wave like movement. This is certainly not a traditional house. House, land, and nature look as if they are soaring up together and give jolly and attractive feels to it. By dividing a long space into the two-part curves it brings about the impression of dynamics and activeness between parents and children. Also, it shows the will, desire, and everyday lives of children as they grow old.

Seok-Chul Kim : Crisp ideas and flexible designing are two major characteristics of this building. The designing of a building is more like bringing out a theme instead of solving problems for practicality. Connecting the gathering place of the family with kid's room in one flow is a good idea. Three different paths and being in one big flow of space reflect the concept of Child Family Housing well. This idea would be a good fit for multi-house unit as well as low-height house.

Shigeru Uchida : Smooth curves of this design of Lucas Lou are very different from the ones in the traditional houses. Its planar structure continues even as it divides the kid's rooms. This is very refreshing unique attempt of communicating. It's impressive that the meeting point is set up on the family room.

Cui Kai : As an interesting, humorous, and elegant designing the shape of the building resembles oriental garden houses. It expresses the traditional village as chained multi-unit households. The building has neatly clustered inside which is for intimate communication between parents and children and, at the same time, they can have their privacy. This idea fits well for the main them of the contest. But I can help thinking its structure is too formal that it might give you hard time in placing of furniture in rather small living space the lack of functionality of 2nd floor. With the inappropriate choice of the direction of the building it makes me skeptical of the windows leading to narrow garden can have the access to due sunlight. Giving the credit for the potential to fix the shortcomings I partly recommend this work.