Residence Rabbit

Also known as Residence Rabbits, this project, nestled in a quiet residential neighborhood of Bangkok, was designed for a landscape architect, his wife and their young son, with a request for “a house with a series of courtyards.” In addition, the design needed to accommodate the extreme climate, with the garden echoing the architecture language while also connecting to the home and creating pleasant microclimates.

The landscape design offers a sensitive solution for an urban home, and fulfils the brief that it should be able to grow along with the family and their needs. These requests were viewed as opportunities rather than problems, and are translated into subtle but creative design solutions. 

The two-storied house occupies the site while leaving enough open space to accommodate a refreshing pool, large trees, as well as an inviting lawn. The relationship between the house and the landscape becomes crucial. By dividing the house into two closely interconnected volumes, it leaves room for the natural environment desired by the family. 

Each interior space is visually connected to different types of view outside, with views and amounts of sunlight all taken into account, and translated into differing sections of the surrounding landscape. With such relationship with the different “rooms” within the house, the landscape becomes a place for activities and experiences, responding to the inhabitants’ actions and events that might occur from within rather than trying to express any stylistic or geometric characters from without. 

Cultivation and construction both demand different attitudes towards the terrain; more specifically, the first often refers to landscape design while the second to architecture. Yet the difference is not always prominent. Sometimes a project demonstrates a close relationship rather than distinction between the two. This residence design had as its goal this integral relationship, requiring a rethink again about the similarities between topographical cultivation and construction. 

We proposed a series of white solid walls along the east-west axis to help block the strong afternoon sunlight from the south. The rooms are integrated between these walls. With full glass windows, every room boasts two garden views towards the east and the west.

The garden was designed not only to echo the architecture language, but also to complement and accommodate the local climate. Overall, the courtyards create a variety of connections between the house and the garden. Together, the house and the garden create pleasant microclimates for the residents and their guests.

To the inhabitants, this landscape is cultivated and constructed “for them,” with activities smoothly flowing from one space onto the next. Indeed, it is not difficult to imagine differing spaces within the landscape grown and transformed, merging and emerging as lifestyles change over the years. Rather than a completed entity composed by the designer, the house’s landscape is like a work in progress, waiting to be filled by the owners’ future needs.  

Working closely with its architecture, the landscape of this home springs from a design that sensitively engages the particularities of the place and will not satisfy itself with the invention and variation of abstractions. Everything is tangible, and provides a real platform for daily activities. At the same time, this platform, a stage for the prosaic activities of life, is at once familiar and inspiring, offering an escape into a selective dream.

Considering as a unified whole, the house and its landscape can be seen as an ensemble that allows both the internal and external factors to come into play. Life, particularly a family life, always fluctuates and changes, and our design for this home reflects this. This is where a careful cultivation of landscape design and the construction of a residence truly become one.