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Vertical Glass House
Atelier FCJZ

VERTICAL GLASS HOUSE

Office: Atelier FCJZ
Principal Architect: Yung Ho Chang
Project Architect: Lu Bai
Project Team: Li Xiang Ting, Cai Feng
Location: Xuhui District Longteng Road, Shanghai, China
Client:  West Bund
Building Area: 170 m2 Structural
Type: Housing/Exhibition

Posted 25 March 2014

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Vertical Glass House Description
Yung Ho Chang / FCJZ

 
Vertical Glass House was designed by Yung Ho Chang as an entry to the annual Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition organized by the Japan Architect magazine in 1991. Chang received an Honorable Mention award for the project. Twenty-two years later in 2013, the West Bund Biennale of Architecture and Contemporary Art in Shanghai decided to build it as one of its permanent pavilions.

Yung Ho Chang 
Original drawings in water color

Vertical Glass House is a urban housing prototype and discusses the notion of transparency in verticality while serving as a critic of Modernist transparency in horizontality or a glass house that always opens to landscape and provides no privacy. While turning the classic glass house 90 degrees, Vertical Glass House is on one hand spiritual: With enclosed walls and transparent floors as well as roof, the house opens to the sky and the earth, positions the inhabitant right in the middle, and creates a place for meditation. On the other hand, Vertical Glass House is material: Vertical transparency visually connects all the utilities, ductworks, furniture pieces on different levels, as well as the staircase, into a system of domesticity and provides another reading of the modern theory of “Architecture as living machine.”

Vertical Glass House
Interior bath
Atelier FCJZ

Vertical Glass House
Interior kitchen
Atelier FCJZ

Vertical Glass House
Interior Living
Atelier FCJZ

The structure erected in Shanghai in 2013 was closely based on the 22-years old design scheme by Chang and developed by the Atelier FCJZ.  With a footprint of less than 40 square meters, the 4-story residence is enclosed with solid concrete walls leaving little visual connection to its immediate surrounding.  The walls were cast in rough wooden formwork on the exterior and smooth boards on the interior to give a contrast in texture in surface from the inside out. Within the concrete enclosure, a singular steel post is at the center with steel beams divide the space in quarters and frame each domestic activity along with the concrete walls. All the floor slabs for the Vertical Glass House, which consists of 7cm thick composite tempered glass slabs, cantilevers beyond the concrete shell through the horizontal slivers on the façade.  The perimeter of each glass slab is lit from within the house; therefore, light transmits through the glass at night to give a sense of mystic for the pedestrians passing by.  All the furniture were designed specifically for the rooms inside the Vertical Glass House to be true to the original design concept and keep a cohere appearance with its structures and stairs. Air conditioning was added to the House.

Vertical Glass House
North façade
Atelier FCJZ

Vertical Glass House
Site aerial
Atelier FCJZ

Vertical Glass House
South façade
Atelier FCJZ

Vrtical Glass House interior
Atelier FCJZ

The Vertical Glass House will be operated by the West Bund Biennale as a one-room guest house for visiting artists and architects while serving as an architectural exhibition. 

Vertical Glass House
Interior Top floor
Atelier FCJZ

Vertical Glass House
Interior at night
Atelier FCJZ

Vertical Glass House
Interior WC
Atelier FCJZ

Yung Ho Chang, Professor of Architecture and fomer Head of the Department of Architecture, comes to MIT from Peking University where he was Head and Professor of the Graduate Center of Architecture. He received his MArch from the University of California at Berkeley and taught in the US for 15 years before returning to Beijing to establish China's first private architecture firm, Atelier FCJZ. He has exhibited internationally as an artist as well as architect and is widely published, including the monograph Yung Ho Chang/Atelier Feichang Jianzhu: A Chinese Practice. His interdisciplinary research focuses on the city, materiality, and tradition. He often combines his research activities with design commissions.
http://www.fcjz.com

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