4 x 4 House

Klaus-Peter Gast

Description

A minimal plot with an approved building area of five by five metres and a view of the Seto Inland Sea and its bridge were the attractive conditions offered for this little house. Tadao Ando designed a four-storey tower to accommodate the maximum area, but particularly in order to celebrate the territorial exclusivity: rather like a viewing platform, the living and dining area on the topmost floor provides a breathtaking view over the straits, with the peripheral bridge in the background.

This living room with inserted linear kitchen is the head of the tower; it is the same width as the substructure, but was offset in the direction of the bridge by a metre. Ando uses this gesture to point out the spectacular external environment, but it also serves to develop a tension-filled duality within the body of the building. The ’tower’ with its offset head suddenly becomes a compositional structure: we do not see just one ’deformed’, divided body, but two, penetrating yet almost independent of each other. The same façade apertures indicate the ’unity’ of the two parts, but the offset ’living section’ is independent because of its totality as a figure. The framing outline on both the sea and land sides makes the whole space into a window, a ’showroom’. Living here means being alive, transporting yourself out of the confines of your own housing into the sweep of the landscape; the space becomes a focusing lens for a constant view into the distance.

The three floors below house a study, a bedroom and the sanitary facilities on the entrance floor. The stairs, an independent body within a body, are an activating generator in the up and down of access. Ando’s careful exposed concrete walls homogenize the overall figure and their elegant gruffness responds to the heterogeneous surroundings, which contain a number of technical elements. Another building, placed on the water like a pavilion, will complement the tower in future.