Lead designer Jeff Weng, alongside Taiwan-based studio 2BOOKS DESIGN, have created this apartment-style condominium located in an old residential community in Taipei City. The 40-year-old property features a fresh interior that relies mainly on the front of the apartment for daylighting surface. However, the former owner extended the balcony towards the outside, which greatly reduced the daylighting surface available. In order to ensure there would be a sufficient amount of natural light in the house, the architect’s first step was to restore the balcony to its original state, so that light could enter the house without any obstruction.

With an objective to transform the interior of the apartment into a studio and dwelling space, 2BOOKS DESIGN changed the living room with its original layout into a studio. With this approach, the owner would be able to enjoy natural light while working during the day time. For the interior partitions, glass was the material of choice, which were installed between the main bathroom and the studio, the guest bathroom and the dining room, the dining room and the bedroom, and the bedroom and the main bathroom. All with the purpose of allowing more natural light to penetrate into each space, making them brighter.

We hoped to make a distinction between the public and private areas, that is the work and the dwelling area, through a narrow corridor, which would not only make a distinction to some extent, but also maintain the spatial coherence for more flexible use in the future.

The owner of the apartment is a filmmaker who handles post-production and needs to have precise judgement and acuity of colours. Therefore, with regard to the colour planning of the interior space, the architects employed many low-chroma colours to avoid interference during his work. The clean and simple interior painting was inspired by the nature of the homeowner’s work.

Dry plants that have been dyed white were hung above a long worktable in the centre of the 30 square-metre space. As the visual focus of the studio, the organic lines of the plants help to soften the surrounding square pattern.

This is a fine example of intentional living through simple, spacious, and understated design.

We also featured the work of 2BOOKS DESIGN in Minimalissimo Nº3