Description

The 15 × 25 m lot is divided into five equal strips. These are allocated for use as: front garden, interior, central courtyard, interior, rear garden. The house consists of two glass containers raised on pilotis (reminiscent of Mies’s Farnsworth House) that are linked. The area beneath the containers assumes the role of a “universal floor”: sliding glass doors establish a visual link between interior and exterior and, when open, transform the two areas into a cohesive whole.

The functional elements are arranged within this large space. In keeping with the tradition of the Japanese home, sliding doors are used to temporarily enclose bedrooms, bathrooms, and tatami rooms. In a similar vein, a tent roof can enclose the interior courtyard when desired. Openness and intimacy are options that can be chosen at will in this arrangement. One level of each half of the house is dedicated to a large common area, (one top left, and another bottom right), which is seen from the private rooms across the courtyard.

The house is separated from the densely developed urban fabric by full-height concrete walls and planted trellises, and celebrates the expanse of the sky.

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Originally published in: Oliver Heckmann, Friederike Schneider (eds.), Floor Plan Manual Housing, fourth revised and expanded edition, Birkhäuser, 2011.