It comes as no surprise that Tonkin Liu’s innovative Sun Rain Rooms have swept up numerous accolades. Since the project was unveiled in 2017, awards include the BD House Architect Award 2019, Don’t Move, Improve! First Prize 2018, and the RIBA London Award 2017.
Tonkin Liu’s design sees the garden of the architects’ Grade-II Listed Georgian townhouse transformed into a two-storey extension that serves as both a studio for the practice and a home for the partners’ family. The ground floor boasts a concealed kitchen, workshop, potting shed, store and deep planter for the small trees in the green roof above, and offers a meeting space or seating area beside the patio garden. The basement further offers a bedroom with en-suite closet space and bathroom, a second bathroom, and an enlarged plant-filled light-well.
Sun Rain Rooms
tonkinliu.co.uk
shaped by the arc of the sun,
a coffered roof encircles an open patio,
falling from the sky,
a rain shower fills the tank then the patio
Perhaps the extension’s most exciting design, however, is the central patio, which can transform into a pool at the touch of a button; rainwater falls through a winding pipe that follows the curve of the plywood roof and collects in a harvesting tank, which floods the patio to form a reflecting pool when desired. The roof is also curved in plan and section to allow maximum light into a patio garden, while round coffered skylights echo the wave pattern of raindrops landing in the pool.
What is particularly striking about the Sun Rain Rooms is its inversion of traditional perceptions of indoor and outdoor. By turning the garden space into a hybrid living-working space, Tonkin Liu’s Sun Rain Rooms are transformative in more ways than one. As well as creating a shift in how we perceive the separation between ‘in’ and ‘out’, the architects’ design is itself in continual flux, changing with the weather and with the seasons, hence the title of the project.
Despite establishing these shifts away from typical ideas of ‘house’ and ‘garden’, the Sun Rain Rooms do not completely abandon the notion of having some outdoor space. I have already explored the patio or ‘pool’ within the design, which it the only part of the extension that remains exposed to the elements. Seen from above, however, the planted roof, together with the bedded plants beside the patio, maintain the illusion of a more traditional garden.
Another innovative feature of the Sun Rain Rooms is its curved design. Free from the standard square rooms of the main house, the garden space is a blank slate that allows the designer to create a non-linear plan. This opens up unique possibilities that result in an incredibly smart layout, with space for two bathrooms neatly tucked around the bedroom space as well as a quasi walk-in-wardrobe. The beautiful symmetry in the design must also be noted, with the bedroom area following the curve of the patio pool, which in turn allows even more natural light into what would otherwise be a fairly dark basement.
For me, the Sun Rain Rooms are an architectural feat of ingenuity. They cause the viewer to question typical perceptions of what constitutes interior and exterior space, and how that space could be transformed, yet without becoming utterly ‘other’. While upon first glance the Sun Rain Rooms struck me as completely futuristic, and something I had never seen before, after studying the space it feels much more accessible, realistic (with a million dollar budget, sure), and simply downright clever design.