Seoul studio OBBA has completed a house in South Korea's Hadong county, featuring brick walls that wrap around small gardens to create private outdoor spaces connected to the living areas.

Three brothers, who were born and raised on the rural site but now live in the city, asked OBBA to design a compact new house for their elderly mother in place of their old home.
The Vault House is located on the edge of an urban area and is surrounded by farmland. A railway line passes along its southeast perimeter and a main road extends along one of the other sides.

The house's proximity to infrastructure and the adjacent fields meant the architects needed to create a distinct boundary between public and private space, while attempting to retain views towards the nearby forests. Rather than introducing a high screening wall around the perimeter of the site, the studio integrated the function of this "fence wall" into the 82-square-metre home's red-brick facades.

The masonry surfaces create a solid barrier that wraps around the building to provide the necessary privacy, as well as protection from the noise of the road and railway.
In places, the walls extend outwards and curve around to enclose secluded gardens. These intermediary spaces between indoors and outdoors increase the building's plan and accentuate its connection with the surrounding land.

"By designing the fence wall, which is more commonly treated as an entity independent from the building, the house coul...