The Red Dot award winner, White Studio, is run by The virtual room Yibai design team. The virtual room Yibai design team, founded in 2002, has more than 20 years of rich design experience and it excels in architectural design, interior design, commercial space planning, and exhibition space planning services.The firm’s main focus is on communicating with the owner about functional needs and then combining functionality and aesthetics with the team’s design capabilities.The White Studio’s working process includes trying new building materials, paying attention to the details, and the quality of the work,creating an overall balanced and comfortable atmosphere for the space.
The firm believes in Zhuangzi’s Xinzhai Philosophy “A vacant room produces whiteness, and auspiciousness ceases.”
The ‘room’ is a metaphor for the heart. If the soul is empty, it is pure white and only born.
“Empty room” is a metaphor for the soul’s emptiness and ‘whiteness,’ and the words are bright.
Tao Yuanming has independent insight and practical skills into Zhuangzi’s Xinzhai philosophy.
Interior architectural design should flow like “endless free imagination.” But it needs a person to redirect their unique understanding and insights and have the skills to practice and complete!
Let us look into a few projects executed by the White Studio.
1. TKU AI | Red Dot award
The Tamkang University or TKU AI is an AI-based university that works on how to make AI closer to people’s hearts with the advent of the AI era. A university partnered with Microsoft Taiwan, bringing about a revolution on the current issues like the inspiration and importance of AI in universities.
The establishment of Tamkang University highlights the AI robot technology, QA situation, AIOT situation analysis, MR situational experience, Pearson Vue Test rooms, and hands-on lab teaching interactive classroom.
The White Studio advances with people’s feelings. In TKU’s case, AI’s teaching is the purpose. In the design layout of the university, an introduction to a large amount of natural light takes place, and smooth moving lines in the space guide different experience situations so that users who visit can naturally incorporate them into it.
2. In Between Taiwan (2017 -2019)
In-between Taiwan is a mix of residential and office buildings. The owner of this complex is Dongzuo. His brief for the complex included the need for elevators, stairs, male and female toilets, a five-person office, an eight-person meeting space, a personal office space, plus a capacity of 114 sq.m. The complex has two private car garages and fire equipment warehouses.
When analyzing the complex, only one facade faces the park, and there are entrances and exits for adjacent houses on the other three facades. Therefore, the division design of the building volume overcomes the building coverage rate, and planting and waterscape can be transplanted into this base to lower carbon emissions.
The main entrance and exit are on the outer façade of the south building because there are no windows, so the firm was worried that the towering visual sense is too heavy.
The other elements include a stucco-painted surface and teak wood at the main entrance to create a gate with a visual height of more than six meters.
In the south stairwell, glass bricks produced in Czech are used as the outer wall to let light inside. The studio hopes visitors can feel the warmth via the changes of light and shadow presented by the glass bricks with bare feet.
On the three sides that interfere with the adjacent houses, no windows are open to maintain privacy with the neighbors instead, the depth difference between the volumes is used to provide a large area of windows that is opened on the inner two-way façade so that users can enjoy the interior space.
Unrestrained, one enjoys the respect of sunlight, air, and water interacting with the environment without being disturbed.
3. Overlook Sea (Taiwan) | Red Dot award
The central point of the overall space of the residence is set as the restaurant, which not only echoes the living inertia of the homeowner, but also extends from the direction of the porch connection, expanding the vertical and horizontal directions of the four directions, and creating a depth of field of the entrance; the left and right sides are cleverly turned inward. The kitchen storage space and the multifunctional study space serve as a horizontal extension. The overall guest-dining area is no longer defined by a single function or a single space.
The material uses the warm eucalyptus wood grain and uses the simple and neat grid technique to make space divisions, which can not only give each other wider space for work and rest but also use chandeliers to frame three-dimensional vision. The focal point, as soon as you enter the door, you can be attracted by the lamps set in three dimensions, gaze forward along the line, and finally, the visual focus is located in the center of the residence – the dining room.
Due to the low beams of the high-rise building, the inclined ceiling design
makes the layers light and thin, and the TV wall shape is used to extend the line to achieve the continuity of the vertical and horizontal space and to create the framing effect of the floor-to-ceiling windows.
4. Weize (Taiwan, Zhubhei) | Red Dot award
The white studio looks forward to creating different spaces in this building structure to highlight the characteristics of Swiss brand bathroom equipment. The whole built-up is made up of a single material- Mahogany, which is used to highlight the texture of white porcelain, and then uses different color blocks of micro- architecture to present the characteristics of various series.
These were few works completed by the White Studio. White Studio believed in providing building solutions which brought in a sense of warmth for their clients.
Works Cited:
- “Taiwan|Xushi Yibai International Design Office|Architecture.Interior.Landscape Design.” WhiteStudio,
www.whitestudio2002.com.
