Within the alleyways of Tainan, there sits a brick house that emits lights. One can see sunrise, the elderly neighbor, and the birds resting on the pole of the house.

© Yu-Chen Tsao

Architects: J.R Architects

Location: Tainan, Taiwan

Architect In Charge: Cho-Jen Huang

Design Team: Wan-I Lin, Tzu-Yin Yang

Area: 130.0 m2

Project Year: 2018

Photographs: Yu-Chen Tsao

© Yu-Chen Tsao

Text description provided by the architects. Within the alleyways of Tainan, there sits a brick house that emits lights. One can see sunrise, the elderly neighbor, and the birds resting on the pole of the house.

© Yu-Chen Tsao
The building was originally an outdated hostel hidden in the old alleyway and is now renovated into an office space. From the early site investigation, we noticed the wooden partition walls were all unusable due to the lack of maintenance and aging. The overly done expansions rendered the interior space dark and chaotic; however, we saw rays of lights penetrated through the fragmented apertures and engraved stardust-like spots on the walls.

© Yu-Chen Tsao

That image sparked the initial concept idea.For the project, we wanted to insert a unique yet humble design within the region. In order to response to the local geo-context, we chose to use brick facade with large geometric openings along with some scattered punctures, which were inspired from the light...