Atelier ITCH Renovates a Seoul Alleyway House for a Couple and Their Dog Zozo

At the dead end of a residential alley in Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, a small aging house has been quietly rebuilt from the inside out. Atelier ITCH took on the renovation of this 112 square meter structure for a couple in their thirties and their dog, Zozo, keeping the original footprint nearly intact while rethinking everything about how the space is occupied. The ground floor measures just 20 square meters; the upper floor, 15. Working at that scale, every material choice and spatial decision carries real weight.

What makes Zozo House worth studying is not its size but its discipline. The architects adopted a strict Miesian "less is more" posture, removing conventional room partitions so the dog could roam freely, then compensating for the openness with layered material transitions, concealed storage, and a sequence of indoor and outdoor gardens that make the house feel far larger than its numbers suggest. The result is a home where the corridor is a decompression chamber, the purification tank becomes a moss garden, and the bathroom opens onto a bamboo grove. Restraint, here, is generative.

Entry Sequence and the Long Corridor

The entrance door is pushed inward from the facade line, a simple privacy gesture that also establishes the first spatial compression. Beyond it, a long, narrow corridor runs between built-in storage units that double as a shoe rack. Stainless steel countertops line the galley kitchen along one wall, their reflective surfaces bouncing what little daylight makes it through the tall window at the corridor's far end. The proportions are deliberately tight: the hallway squeezes your perception before releasing you into the living spaces beyond.

A recessed wall niche punctuates the corridor with a small moment of delight. Glass shelves hold objects at eye level, while a lower opening provides exactly the kind of pass-through that a curious dog needs. It is a detail that would be easy to overlook, but it captures the architects' commitment to designing for all the house's inhabitants, not just the humans.

Kitchen and the Indoor Garden

The ground floor opens into a kitchen organized around a dark concrete island that faces a glass-enclosed courtyard. Bamboo and low plantings are lit from below, turning what could have been a lightwell into something closer to a terrarium. The existing building's purification tank sits beneath this garden. Rather than relocating it at great expense, Atelier ITCH chose to absorb the infrastructure into the design, layering soil and moss over it. The pragmatism is admirable: the constraint became the feature.

Grey cabinetry wraps the kitchen perimeter with minimal hardware, and a young tree anchors the courtyard view through floor-to-ceiling glazing. The architects kept the original color palette largely untouched, relying instead on the contrast between the matte dark finishes of the indoor garden's wood framing and the lighter tones of the kitchen surfaces. There is no decorative excess here. The garden itself is the ornament.

The Plywood Stairwell and Upper Study

A single step, roughly the size of a stair landing, marks the boundary between floors. Materials shift at this threshold: the concrete and metal of the ground level give way to plywood that wraps the stairwell walls and ceiling in a continuous warm skin. The natural wood texture is left exposed, its grain visible and tactile, establishing a distinctly softer register for the upper floor.

At the top of the stairs, a curved plywood desk is built into a corner bay where a square window frames the canopy of street trees outside. The study occupies the space between the stairwell and the bedroom without any dividing wall, functioning as a buffer zone that maintains the open-plan logic. Soft natural light filters through the windows, and the plywood surfaces absorb and warm it. It is a compact workspace that feels considered rather than cramped, the kind of detail that emerges only when architects take small rooms seriously.

Bedroom, Bathroom, and the Bamboo Grove

The bedroom opens through floor-to-ceiling windows onto a landscaped terrace planted with ornamental grasses and a small tree. This second-floor outdoor space extends the room visually and gives the couple and Zozo a private patch of sky. A concealed door leads from the bedroom into the dressing room and bathroom, maintaining the unbroken surface quality of the walls.

The bathroom is the most deliberately composed room in the house. A stone vanity, glass shower enclosure, and recessed soaking tub are arranged with the precision of a spa, but the real move is the large window that looks directly onto a bamboo grove planted for exactly this purpose. The bamboo serves double duty: it screens the window for privacy while projecting swaying shadows across the interior surfaces. Daily routines, bathing and grooming, become moments of contact with the natural world. It is a small luxury achieved without extravagance, only careful planting and a well-placed opening.

Why This Project Matters

Zozo House is a case study in how renovation can outperform new construction when the constraints are embraced rather than fought. The 112 square meter footprint, the aging structure, the buried purification tank: each limitation became a prompt for invention. Atelier ITCH resisted the temptation to gut the building and start fresh, instead layering new materials and gardens over an existing framework with surgical precision. The approach is economical, ecologically responsible, and architecturally convincing.

More broadly, the project challenges the assumption that minimalism in residential design means austerity. Here, the reduction of partition walls and decorative elements does not strip the house of character. It concentrates attention on what remains: the grain of plywood, the movement of bamboo shadows, the shift from concrete to wood at a single threshold step. For anyone designing small urban homes, particularly in the dense residential fabric of Seoul, Zozo House demonstrates that generosity is not a function of square meters but of care.

Zozo House by Atelier ITCH, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, South Korea. 112 m², completed 2023. Photography by Kiwoong Hong.

About the Studio

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If projects like this are the kind of work you want to make, uni.xyz is a place to publish your own, find collaborators, and enter design competitions.