The author himself calls the Ultra-ruin house a “wooden architectural organism” that “sprouted” on the ruins of an abandoned farm. Located on the slope of Yangming Mountain, the site is much closer to the jungle than the city in terms of its landscape and vegetation. Actually, it was precisely the remoteness from the urban infrastructure that once caused the farm to be abandoned, but when Ultra-ruin was created, this location became almost the main advantage of the project, since the customer was looking for a place for solitude and relaxation.
This unique project was launched back in 2009, when the client asked the architect to design a table and a comfortable space for communication around this table. The next step was the creation of a "sink" for this table, that is, a canopy with a number of amenities, and only then the project grew into a jacuzzi, a bedroom, a full-fledged living room. Marco Casagrande emphasizes that Ultra-ruin continues to evolve today: no one is going to put an end to this project yet.
It is interesting that the architect first did all the "upgrades" on a wooden model of the house - in 2009 this model was exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and in 2011 it became an exhibit at the Taipei World Design Expo.
Creating housing on the border of the forest, the architect made his main theme the dialogue of nature and the man-made environment. This dialogue does not stop for a minute: the total area of the terraces is almost three times larger than the living area of the house, all of its internal premises are separated from the street quite conditionally, and the vegetation feels confident not only around brick and wooden walls, but also in the Ultra-ruin interior. … Marco Casagrande in relation to this project is called a gardener, and the resulting house - "garden of architecture." As a family home, Ultra-ruin serves as both an architectural center, an observatory, and a center for spiritual practices, in which, in particular, "post-industrial meditation" is practiced.
