Paju Citadel Ca&Fe

Citadel Ca&Fe is a single house located in the outskirts in Paju , South Korea. This house is owned by an English literature expert who named it Citadel Ca&Fe , a name containing and reflecting on a lot of profound values just like the architectural work delivered through this project.

Citadel Ca&Fe.

The owner raises two pet dogs, a house cat, and two wild cats. Citadel means a stone fortress, Canine means a dog, Feline means a cat, and Ca&Fe is a compound word of canine and feline. The aim of the owner was to make a stone fortress looking house not for humans but rather for his dogs and cats. The owner was also inspired by the autobiographical novel "Citadel," written by A.J. Cronin, this inspiration expressed his will to live with the heart of serving his later life as the protagonist of the Citadel novel after his retirement.

A fortress and an airstream bus.

The owner of Citadel Ca&Fe requested a house with a stone floor for his dog's nail and a fireplace that would heat the house in the cold days. A living space that combines the lightness of a human house by bringing the example of the airstream bus; an iconic ambulant house with its rounded and polished edges and that could be transformed into a fortress that would last a thousand years was the ideal of the Citadel according to the English expert. And, although the owner imagined a huge rock, he understood that this rock could look more like stones when will be cracked.

A semi-dome and a vault.

This house is full of values, ideals, and contradictory demands, the exact shapes of the demands can seem very superficial, but we tried to find a shape that captures the features of them all. The process of developing the contradictory forms was oddly smooth. What the owner asked for was a house with a distinctive shape such as the caravan airstream bus, for this, we trimmed the shape down a little and arranged it into a half a semi-dome and a vault. This was the process of satisfying the meaning of the fortress, which is permanence, but it was also used as the fundamental architectural language of the entire house.

Travertine tile, brick tile, and magic stone are the main materials used for floor finish, wall and exterior facades respectively. The single house is composed of two floors and a mezzanine area. The first floor has a garage space, a multipurpose room, a warehouse, a gas storage room and a storage area and it is connected to the second floor with a cylindrical stair. The second floor has a main entrance from the outside and it is the space with the main living areas such as; the living room, the kitchen, the master bedroom with a bathroom, and a dressing room . Besides, a vast balcony area around the whole house is conceived as an open space connected with the outside and the inside of the house from the master bedroom and the living room.