Fotografía: Jeremy San
In this heterogeneous context with very different scales and functions, Satoko Saeki and Kok-Meng Tan of the Shanghai based firm KUU, designed a duplex composed of a normal dwelling for the family of a worker combined with a weekend house for the owner of a slipper factory in the compound of the firm's warehouse. The location seems already odd, and so does the program. The designers based their layout on 19 squares, each three by three meters, to form an irregular grid. At first sight, it is reminiscent of the Dutch structuralist movement of the 1960s, advocated by architects like Hermann Herzberger or Aldo van Eyck.
At second sight, one gets a clue of the specific Chinese cultural context for such an experiment. A shared table forms the centre of the duplex. Two kitchen squares and two courtyards are placed diagonally at each corner of the table, enabling the residents to face each other while cooking through an opening in the central cross of the walls.
