Vertical Glass House by Yung Ho Chang

Yung Ho Chang of Atelier FCJZ originally designed the Vertical Glass House as an urban housing prototype for a competition in 1991. Twenty-two years later, the studio was able to realise the project as part of the West Bund Biennale of Architecture and Contemporary Art. According to project architect Lu Bai, the house is a 90-degree rotation of the typical glass houses completed during the Modernist period, placing more of an emphasis on spirituality and materials.

Interior. Image courtesy of Atelier FCJZ.

Project description from Atelier FCJZ

Vertical Glass House was designed by Yung Ho Chang as an entry to the annual Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition organised 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.

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".

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 four-storey 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 centre 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 facade. 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.

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.

CREDITS.

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 sqm Structural.
Type.- Housing/Exhibition.

Location: Longteng Avenue, Xuhui, Shanghai, China.

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Exterior. Image courtesy of Atelier FCJZ.

Site plan. Image courtesy of Atelier FCJZ.

Ground, First and Second floor levels. Image courtesy of Atelier FCJZ.

Elevation and sections. Image courtesy of Atelier FCJZ.

Axonometric and construction section. Image courtesy of Atelier FCJZ.

Rendering. Image courtesy of Atelier FCJZ.

In construction. Image courtesy of Atelier FCJZ.

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More information

Yung Ho Chang

Yung Ho Chang is Principal Architect at Atelier Feichang Jianzhu, a professor at Tongji University, and a professor and the former Head of the Architecture Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Originally from Beijing and educated both in China and in the US, Chang received his Master of Architecture degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1984. He has been practicing in China since 1992 and established Atelier Feichang Jianzhu (FCJZ) in 1993, with Lijia Lu.

He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including First Place in the Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition in 1987, a Progressive Architecture Citation Award in 1996, the 2000 UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts, and the Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006.

Together with FCJZ, he has published eight books and monographs, including Yung Ho Chang / Atelier Feichang Jianzhu: A Chinese Practice and Yung Ho Chang: Luce chiara, camera oscura.

He has participated in the Venice Biennale five times (first in 2000), among several other international exhibitions of art and architecture. He has taught at architecture schools across the US and China, was a professor and founding head of the Graduate Center of Architecture at Peking University (1999-2005), and held the Kenzo Tange Chair at Harvard University (2002) and the Eliel Saarinen Chair at the University of Michigan (2004). In 2011 he became a Pritzker Prize Jury member.

In the past two decades, Atelier FCJZ has always believed in the value and craft of design while emphasizing research and methodology. Today, FCJZ is a multi-disciplinary practice whose outputs range from community to jewelry.

FCJZ received the Progressive Architecture Citation in 1996 for a hillside housing project in Southern China, a WA China Architecture Award in 2004 and a Business Week / Architectural Record China Award in 2006 for Villa Shizilin. Abroad, FCJZ held solo exhibitions of its work at Apex Art in New York in 1999, Harvard University in 2002, Chambers Gallery in 2005, and MIT in 2007. They were also invited to create an installation in the central court at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum in 2008. The firm has participated in numerous international art and architecture exhibitions and biennials, such as Cities on the Move in Vienna, London, New York, and Denmark; and three times at the Guangju Biennale since 1997. Products and architectural models by FCJZ are in the permanent collection at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Art Museum of China.