Rabbit Residence | Boondesign

Nested in a quiet residential neighborhood of Bangkok, Residence Rabbit is orchestrated by the Boon Design.  Known for his unique design and positive attitudes, the architect Boonlert Hemvijitraphan offers us another alternative solution for an urban home. 

Being a home for a young couple and their son, three requirements predicated the design of the house.   It should be able to grow along with the gradual transformation of lives that occupy it; it must accommodate two generations whose preferences and needs widely differ; and it has to provide close connection to the natural environment despite being located in the heart of a metropolis.   These questions are translated into subtle but creative design solutions, for the architect simply considered such requirements as opportunities rather than problems.   The two-storied house occupies the site while leaving enough open space for calming pool, large trees and inviting lawn to be planted.  As the owner is a renowned landscape architect, the relationship between the house and the landscape also becomes crucial.  By dividing the house into two interconnected volumes, the architects give the owners the natural environment they much wanted.   The landscape becomes at once a protective buffer and a lively backdrop for lives inside the house. 

From its exterior, the house is subtly quiet, while the richness begins to show in its interior organization.  In other words, the house discloses content through its operation.  Factors given in the location, quantities of sunlight are taken into account and translated into the house’s configuration as well as materials.  As a building that acts to house activities and experiences, the house is responding to the inhabitants’ actions and events that might occur from within rather than trying to express any stylistic characters from without.  To the owners, it is a house designed and built “for them.”   Spaces in the house are positioned, organized and orchestrated as an ensemble of places that imitate their activities and lives.   Yet nothing is fixed, activities could flow from one space onto the next with the sense of ease.  Thus it is not difficult to imagine each space being reorganized and reshaped if needs occur.  Rather than a complete object composed by the designer, the house seems like a container waiting to be filled by the owners’ actions.  

With the sense of flexibility, the house is also well equipped.  Architecture is complimented with instruments that signify uses and activities.  Everything needed for each event is positioned within reach.  There is no need to know the plan shape of a room to understand whether or not it is in order.    Well–made settings deploy their items so that they are always near enough to be useful.  No single element in a spatial ensemble is positioned to stand out from the rest; no single piece of equipment obtrudes itself into one’s awareness, each coexists with others in a state of shared latency, but with a tendency or disposition to prefigure patterns of behavior.   When most effective, the equipment of each interior setting remains tacit and only comes into action when needed.    Both the architectural elements and the interior equipment are designed to be built and to last.  And just as important as their stability is their flexibility.  This allows the house to be living and breathing while it envelopes life.  Because none of the things in his house is “designed” be to be displayed with the other, they do not require specific setting and offer the freedom of arrangement in ways the owner of the house truly feels like. This type of re-arrangement is facilitated by the fluid interior organization of the space.  Mostly open and free, the spaces of the house flow from one part to the next without interruption.  Only a hint of territorial demarcation reminds the inhabitant of the place and activities he engages in.  And because of the openness, when the house is filled with friends and family, it becomes a welcoming social space filled with familiar objects that make everyone feels at home.  Nothing seems intrusive, nothing screams for special attention.  Everything is orchestrated into a unified rhythm, allowing each and every object to stand quietly yet uniquely in its place, waiting to be discovered.

Through its configuration and elements, the house is designed as an ensemble of flexible instruments that allows both the internal and external factors to come into play.  It is understood from lived experience that always fluctuates.  Seeing it this way will allow us to understand and imagine the real subject matter of the house’s articulation.