Description
Ancient black lava provides the foundations for this house for guests in lively, wooded topography. Satoshi Okada designed a house that fits in with the surrounding scale but is above all intended to be seen as a structure in its own right, keeping a distance. The existing trees help with this, screening the building off from the outside world and gently enclosing it. The lack of a garage or clear access route already indicates that the building is not in use all the time, but occasionally occupied by guests.
The relaxing ‘outward’ calm of the surrounding area was important to the architect, and so he contrasts it dramatically with the lively spatial structure of his design: a diagonal cut splits the volume of a long, narrow rectangular block to follow the functions, creating living and sleeping areas. In addition, the sectional roofs dip towards the middle, the entrance and access area, and the floor also slopes down by about two metres longitudinally. The generous living area rises hall-like through two storeys and forms the end–not the middle–of the building, while the tatami room and the bedroom are arranged on two levels one above the other, alongside a single-storey sanitary block.
The dynamic diagonal evokes the idea of ‘asymmetrical living’: it is an incision, a borderline and at the same time a connecting access line. ‘Living’ in this house is decentralized and yet monumentally designed, with tension-filled spatial dispositions arising from the contradiction between the calm, orthogonal ground plan structure and the roof and wall diagonals. The ‘refraction of space’ becomes a leitmotif and the diagonal section a dominant element. The space builds up from the narrow access corridor to the living hall and challenges the short-term occupants not just to relax, but to devote themselves to experiencing the space and the architecture. The sculptural power of the timber construction, kept entirely in black, creates an artificial counterpoint to the archaic natural foundations and is yet reminiscent of a “band of shadow in the woods” (Okada).
Drawings
Site plan
Axonometric diagram with the position of the living area with the sculptural body of the building
Ground floor with ramp and entrance area, diagonal ‘guiding wall’ to the living room with side kitchen and dining area and separate bedrooms with bathroom
Second floor with gallery in the two-storey living room and sleeping gallery in the bedrooms
Photos
Exterior view of the southwest side with main entrance
Interior view from the entrance area towards the living area
Originally published in: Klaus-Peter Gast, Living Plans: New Concepts for Advanced Housing, Birkhäuser, 2005.