WAP Art Space By Davide Macullo Architects

WAP ART SPACE: Mixed use building; private residence, contemporary art gallery
This work results from a close collaboration between the architect and an enlightened client capable of assimilating  and  encouraging  architectural  choices  motivated  by  reasons  that  generate  forms.  An extraordinary passion has bound us throughout the years of the project, reaching a synthesis expressed by the completed work.
Project:                                               WAP Art Space
Location:                                            Seoul, South Korea
Function:                                            Art Gallery and private house
Project start date:                               August 2013
Construction start date:                      March 2015
Completion date:                                June 2017
Site area:                                            815 m²
Building area:                                     600 m²
Total floor area:                                  3’150 m²
Basement floor area:                           650 m²
Above ground floor area:                     2’000 m²
Volume:                                              16’369  m³
Storeys:                                              2 level basement, 7 levels above ground
Materials:                                           Main structure: reinforced concrete
Finish, exterior:                                  Facade:
Petersen Tegl Kolumba Briks
Finish, interior Art Gallery:
Walls: Plaster
Ceilings: Plaster
Floors: Resin
Finish, interior private house:            Walls:Plaster
Ceilings: Plaster
Floors: Resin
Client:                                                Private client
Architect:                                            Davide Macullo Architects – Lugano TI
Principal:                                            Davide Macullo
Project architect:                                Lorenza Tallarini
Design collaborators:                          Michele Alberio, Tatiana Speranca
Landscape architect :                          Davide Macullo Architects, Lugano , CH
Interior design:                                   Davide Macullo Architects, Lugano , CH
Partner Architects:                             Park Yeongseok – Suh Architects inc., Seoul, South Korea
Jean Son – ISON Architects, Seoul, South Korea
Construction/Site Management:          Dasan Construction & Engineering Co., Ltd.
Construction company:                       Dasan Construction & Engineering Co., Ltd.
Waterproofing:                                   Insung Construction.Co., Ltd.
Window construction:                         Eagon Windows & Doors Co., Ltd.
Heating, plumbing:                             Songhyun Engineering Co., Ltd.
Electrician                                          Namyeong Engineering. Co., Ltd.
Insulation:                                          LG HAUSYS Ltd.
Plasterer, painter:                              Kukbo Design.Co., Ltd
Metal construction:                             Kukbo Design.Co., Ltd
Carpenter:                                          Kukbo Design.Co., Ltd
Floor tiles construction:                      Kukbo Design.Co., Ltd
Kitchen:                                              Bulthaup
Sanitaryware:                                     Hoesch, Toto Kiki Korea Ltd. (Vendor Duomo&Co)
Photographer:                               Yousub Song – Studio Worlderful, Seoul, South Korea

Architecture connects with the identity of a place and projects it into the future. This new building is the synthesis of the values of Korean culture, a culture that considers carefully its gestures, both physical and social and reveals in them expressions of civility, establishing a balance for man in his natural context.
Building today in the metropolitan city of Seoul gives us the opportunity to restore the built volumes to a human scale, giving it an expression that binds it to the necessities of contemporary living.

The three dimensional composition of the work represents a spatial arrangement of the habitable volumes organized on an orthogonal cubic grid that defines a larger space than that actually built. The building is cast about the empty space and this determines the rhythmic relationships with the context, highlighting the importance of the human scale within the urban fabric.

The project stems from the modeling of an approximate cubic grid, two meters on each side, which connects the spaces to the physicality of the inhabitants. The cubic space of two meters on each side is comfortable, it is a space of man’s games of movement that rotates on his center of gravity.
The multiple generated by the grid is the basic element of the relationship between the inhabitant and the urban fabric: 2 meters=man, 20 meters=city. The composition of cubic volumes expressed in multiples, 6-8-10 meters on each side, reveals the living space and defines the new scale of the relationship with the surrounding urban space.
The new building offers, in the current use of its spaces, a mixed use of residential spaces (private) and exhibition spaces (public). The transition between the urban-public-private-intimate space is resolved in a spiral motion that starts from the road, climbing vertically towards the more intimate spaces of the house.

The new residence-gallery presents itself as a contemporary urban castle where living spaces are supported by production space. If in the past the location of animals on the lower floors of a home nourished and warmed, in a physical way, the upper floors; in our case the art nourishes and warms the inhabitants in terms of intellectual comfort, effecting the general welfare of the inhabitants.

The microcosm generated by WAP Art Space establishes its own order of relations with the neighbouring environment, by acting on the perception of the boundary between the public and private space. The building is an organisation that offers a sequence of spaces (cubes) alternating between closed and open, full and empty, compressed and decompressed. This rhythm follows a sort of perceptual map translated into distinct moments of usability but connected together. The sequence of the spaces takes place through the perceptual expansion of each space towards the adjacent or more distant.
The cube as a primary element, chosen for its evocative power, a symbolic and balanced element, escapes the rules of design as it is already defined a priori. The architect’s work is not in designing the project in the classic sense, but rather in managing the spatial organisation of the elements (cubes) through the hypothesised use of time spent in traveling between and staying in the spaces.

In this newly constructed landscape there are alternating material expressions, from the weaving of the rippled brick to the sense of suspension given by the white smooth walls. The exhibition spaces tend to be neutral of their architectural language. We focus on the enjoyment of works of art that will live in these spaces, suspended between a sense of meditation and action. The exhibition spaces are calm. In their primary form, they express a feeling of retreat and participation in the worldview offered by the individual artist through the artwork.