Solitude Co. - Design

D E S I G N .

STUDIO 1B

ASIOIMAR 1125

Situated on the Northern California coastline, Asilomar 1125 is a youth hostel (resort) where fate brings together individuals with different life stories and creates a collective special experience. Asilomar, meaning “refuge by the sea,” is inspired by Julian Morgan’s homogonous project in Monterey Bay where the sea-side campus used to serve as a learning sanctuary for the YWCA, providing a welcoming and inspiring place for young women to grow together and pursue their goals in life. Asilomar 1125 hopes to establish a similar sacred, isolated space where passionate individuals congregate at this unique motel complex and empower each other with love and strength to return to society.
The form of the architecture suggests close social interaction, with each unit having two entrances (exits), one being the front door and the other the back yard sliding door, allowing people to choose the public and private realms of their rooms depending on the orientation of the units. The inside-facing rim is where hanging out and mingling is encouraged, and the outside-facing side leaves room for solitude when needed. The lobby at the heart of the campus serves as a place for check-ins, as well as hosting celebrations and events such as small concerts or group games.

STUDIO 1A

THE FAMILIAR & THE ABSTURD

The existential crisis that a “house” undergoes is the constant battle between attempting to camouflage (“to look just like others”) and reinforcing its own intrinsic character. Through its infinite trial and error, it landed on a typology that conforms with the human perception, one that we call home. Doors, windows, chimneys, and stairs; columns, beams, roofs, and walls. Do these elements stand for the intrinsic character of the house itself, or do they only exist to appease our concept of a house, the essential character? How much agency does a house have to announce its own identity, while retaining its social and economic values in the built environment? What if, in a world of elves, houses do not appear as what we imagine but completely different and ever-evolving? A dynamic house, a moving fortress, a living, breathing being.