ToSummer’s new flagship store in Beijing is situated within a 500-square-meter Siheyuan complex built mid-Qing dynasty, located at 23 Guozijian St. This is the second historical building conservation project ToSummer has undertaken in China after “111 Hunan Rd.,” and the restoration alone took a year to finish. At the sight of this 280-year-old architecture, we began by asking ourselves to find balance between conservation and development.
Since the National 14th Five-Year Plan proposed that China’s urban development should shift from “incremental development” to “stock renewal,” the renewal of old buildings has flourished everywhere. In this context, Approach Design Studio has carried out a bold exploration, we hope that the revival of old buildings will not only stop at the conventional renovation of exterior and interior but also consider how to let each old building bring more contribution to the daily life of the city, actively relate to the boundaries of the city, to trigger possible chemical reactions. This design aims to explore another possibility between architecture and the city and hopes to provide a new way of thinking and valuable reference for urban renewal and urban public space exploration and utilization.
The architectural space is defined by light and matter. Building a space is not a constructive exercise, but the process by which these two elements coexist. This project revolves around the remains of what was the hermitage of Santa Ana de Porcuna. A space battered by the vicissitudes of abandonment and aggressive interventions with the building. The main objective of the project was, by recovering and restoring the pre-existing elements, to provide the necessary spatiality to recover the essentials of a religious space.
The renovation project for this house achieves a new figure and volumetry by replacing the concrete tiles with a metallic roof, which conceives greater lightness and horizontality to the building. The spatial integration between indoors and outdoors was crucial to this solution, as well as the creation of orthogonal and uniform environments, possible through the elimination of excessive pre-existing angulations. Always aiming to frame and enhance the landscape.
Renovation and expansion of a semi-detached house in Caramão neighbourhood, Lisbon. The highlight is drawn to the extension at the back, made possible by moving forward the rear façade into the interior of the plot, resulting in the fully redrawing of the façade which allowed a good number of interior changes. This façade has few visual elements, where only the essential prevails in contrast with the diversity and characteristic disorder of the usual patio environments.
The space that focuses solely on me is the complex city center: Yang Yoo Dang. Yang Yoo Dang, a small hanok located in the alleyway of Bukchon Hanok Village between Gyeongbokgung and Changdeokgung, has been a house where a family has lived for a long time. The client hoped that this place, close to the tourist destination, would be used as an open space for anyone and a space for various activities, not a closed residential space. When The family moved into the hanok for the first time, they went through a major renovation it was a house with long memories of my family, so they considered being reborn as a complex cultural space without damaging the atmosphere of the existing hanok.
A well-established urban residential area in the city of Santo Tirso – The intervention is inevitably a reflex response to this complex and challenging context. Urban plot, confined between neighbors and whose visible confrontations had little or nothing significant from the landscape point of view.
The Daniello mill is a building that stands on the banks of the Roncaglia stream, in the center of the Motta Valley Park, between the municipalities of Coldrerio and Novazzano.
The To Summer Shanghai Flagship store, located at No. 111 Hunan Road, is a “Spanish Colonial Revival” architecture. Sited amongst many of its kind built 100 years ago, this project introduces a new subject to the neighborhood – an “Eastern New Modern” aroma brand. Our design aims to resolve its programmatic discord, structural challenges, and perceived conflict.
By 1920, the upper class in Joseon Dynasty largely lived in Bukchon (the northern village), and from the 30’s, as the border of Seoul for administration expanded, Seoul’s urban structure changed to fit modern types as well. Located in Bukchon-ro of Jongno district, this Korean-style house also is produced in the era of 1930s, when collective standardization was made by housing management firms.
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