This project description is an excerpt from the longer article “Infill and Puntal Interventions”. For a comparative analysis and further data on this and all other categories including accompanying graphs, please see the article “A Turning Point”.
Lucky Drops or Skin House No. 7 by Yamashita Yasuhiro from Atelier Tekuto is another single family detached dwelling, also located in Setagaya-ku. With a building footprint of merely 21.96 square meters, this extraordinary project epitomizes the kyōshō jūtaku and the extreme conditions under which these puntal residential insertions are created. Designed for a young couple who had purchased a small plot of land of 58.68 square meters in area and were working with a limited budget, the house maximized the depth of the site, extending up to 19 meters in length to the maximum allowed on the site. The slender, trapezoidal structure tapers from 3.2 meters at its entrance, to a modest 0.7 meters at the back, while the height is correspondingly reduced from 2.5 storeys above grade at the front to 1.5 storeys at the rear end. Apart from taking advantage of the unusually long site, the architect and his team sought to maximize the livable space by extending underground which was not subjected to the same setback regulations in place above ground. As such, what would have been an extremely compressed space was overcome by generating three levels within the house. The upper level accommodating the bedroom and closet space is composed of steel mesh grids adjoining the white-painted steel members that framed each of the drop-shaped panels; the ground floor opens up to a 1.5-storey void with stairs leading to the basement where the rest of the living/dining areas are held, including the living room, kitchen, and bathroom. Given the tapering form of the house, the primary living areas such as the bedroom and living room were stacked at the front where the structural width is the widest, while service areas like the closet and bathroom were tucked away to the back. In addition, to maintain a comfortable passageway through the basement, the service functions were lined up against the eastern walls. Instead of typical glass or wooden exterior walls, fiber-reinforced plastic panels were used to clad the house above grade, thus bringing soft natural light into the deep and narrow interior while maintaining the inhabitants’ privacy. Again, white was the predominant color, enhancing the luminosity of the thin exterior skin as well as the visual spaciousness in the interior. At night, the house lights up from within and glows like a jewel box, transforming this thin sliver of a structure into an alluring sight to behold.
