A doorway is the only opening in the faceted concrete facade of this family residence in Tokyo by architecture studio MDS.
Kiyotoshi Mori and Natsuko Kawamura of Tokyo-based MDS wanted Shirokane House to make the most of its small site, so they designed a three-storey volume that angles outwards and upwards to create extra space and bring in more light.
“There are basic requirements for a house, where people live, such as privacy protection and ample daylight and ventilation,” they said. “It, however, takes a little ingenuity to satisfy such requirements under a given condition that a site is surrounded by the neighbouring buildings.”
Residents enter the house on the middle floor, and are led through to a double-height kitchen and dining room that receives natural light through a pair of high level windows.
One of the windows fronts a living room on the storey above, while the other sits in front of a small roof terrace.
A lightweight steel and timber staircase leads up to this top floor. Upon arriving in the living room, a steeply angled ceiling is revealed, as well as a corner window with a pointed tip.
Concrete walls are left exposed inside the house as well as outside, and are textured by horizontal markings that reveal the original timber formwork. Floors are finished in walnut.
A set of wall-mounted rungs form a ladder leading up to a second terrace on the roof, while bedrooms and bathrooms are located on the lowest floor.
The small site is located in a typical Tokyo urban residential area, where houses are closely built up. A pursuit of internal spaces in this house, as a result, changes the Tokyo cityscape a little.
An area for one floor is usually desired as large as possible, in particular, in such a narrow site. For this house, the first floor area is small due to the parking space and the second floor is, instead, larger. The outer appearance is examined based on ceiling height, slant line regulations for a building shape.
There are basic requirements for a house, where people live, such as privacy protection and ample daylight and ventilation. It, however, takes a little ingenuity to satisfy such requirements under a given condition that a site is surrounded by the neighbouring buildings. For the site, the southern site across the road is “tentatively” a parking space and no one can tell what will happen in the future. The daylight is, therefore, taken in from the above as much as possible and it is brought downstairs.
The living room is on the top floor. The roof terrace facing the blow-by above the living room and the terrace connected with the living room take daylight and air in the house and the light falls on the dining and kitchen room downstairs. The irregular shape at the corner of the site allows the house continuously to keep privacy as well as daylight and ventilation.
The building looks quiet only with the entrance on the south facade, it embraces expressive internal spaces where light and shadow change by the minute.
Architecture: Kiyotoshi Mori & Natsuko Kawamura / MDS Location: Minato-ku, Tokyo Principal Use: Residence Structure: RC Site Area: 64.49 sqm Total Floor Area: 101.63 sqm
Exterior Finish: cedar forms exposed concrete Roof: exposed concrete Floor: walnut flooring Wall: plaster/cedar forms exposed concrete Ceiling: acrylic emulsion paint + plaster board
Japanese architect Shimpei Oda has reworked the dark interior of a humble 1920s house in Kyoto to bring natural light into living spaces and create a small gallery that opens to the street (+ slideshow).
With a width of just 4.1 metres, House in Shichiku is typical of the long and narrow houses built in many of Japan’s dense urban districts, nicknamed “eel beds”, and the challenge for Shimpei Oda was to work out how to bring daylight inside.
“Because the next building was way too close, the inside of the house was so dark, even in the daytime,” said Oda.
The two storeys of the house were re-planned to ensure each of the main rooms received natural light, whether from a window or through openings in the walls or ceilings.
According to Oda, the house had suffered several poor quality renovations in the past, so missing walls and pillars had to be replaced.
“The existing structure was arbitrarily shifted and newly inserted structures and reinforcements were painted with white colour,” he said.
The small gallery is located on the ground floor and is fronted by a square grid of nine windows, some of which fold open to provide a direct access from the street.
The main entrance sits alongside and leads through to a generous open-plan space that functions as a living room, dining space and kitchen.
Bathroom and toilet facilities were considered least in need of natural light, so are grouped together in the space between the living room and gallery.
A lightweight steel staircase with a zigzagging profile leads directly up to a home office with bedrooms on either side. Exposed wooden columns and joists support the roof, while large openings help to bring light through each space.
Photography is by Shinkenchiku-sha.
Here’s the project description from Shimpei Oda:
House in Shichiku
This was the renovation of a house which was built in the 1920s and the house was surrounded by old rows of houses. The house with a frontage of 4.1 metres and depth of 12.8 metres was like so-called “sleeping places of an eel”.
Because the next building was way too close, the inside of the house was so dark even in the daytime. The house had been illogically renovated at several times before so that important pillars and walls were missed.
A resident hoped to live with furniture and paintings. A studio, sanitary, and home office were inserted as volumes of the structure. Those intended not only to reinforce the house but also to softly divide spaces to up and down and left and right.
The whole image was glimpsed from openings and slits which were widely opened and the volumes itself were painted with white colour so that the texture could visually stand up to indicate the depth and extent.
The front of the studio opened to alley was changed from a shutter to windows. To change to the well reflective material of lean-to roof, it functioned as a reflector and could get the natural lightning to the inside so it diffused to bright all. Also, it was concerned the transition of brightness by time.
The existing structure was arbitrary shifted and newly inserted structures and reinforcements were painted with white colour. Those were created the context of time but functionally which meant to indicate those things mixed naturally without any conflicts. The softly divided space may be able to use by any discoveries for the living, studio, and home office as extension with the factor of furniture and paintings which may increase in the future.
Project name: House in Shichiku Location of site: Kyoto, Japan Site area: 83.50 sqm Building area: 53.60 sqm Total floor area: 91.00 sqm Type of Construction: wood Program: house
Yo Shimada of Tato Architects decided to base the two-storey House in Kawanishi on the archetypal Australian dwelling known as “The Queenslander” after coming across photographs of the buildings in construction.
“Since then, I have been interested in the form of this style of house,” said Shimada, explaining how he was later able to visit Australia and see the houses for himself. “It’s a design solution that mirrored my own thinking,” he added.
The stilted structure of the house, comprising a system of exposed steel I-beams, allowed Shimada to recess part of the ground floor to allow ample room for a public walkway that runs alongside the property.
The first floor still continues to the edge of the site, sheltering part of the walkway but also framing the house’s entrance lobby – a transparent glass box containing a cabinet for storing shoes before entering.
According to Shimada, this space is intended to highlight the boundary between the public space of the walkway and the privacy of the domestic interior. “It sits reminiscent of a bus stop containing furniture brought there by neighbours,” he said.
Square in plan, the house has a non-symmetrical grid that defines the sizes of rooms contained within. Living, dining and kitchen areas occupy a large open-plan space on the ground floor, but are loosely separated by a boxy white bathroom.
Two large voids in the ceiling allow views up to the floor above. One of these openings also functions as a stairwell and ascends up over a storage area at the front of house.
A landing halfway up the stairs creates a sunken seating area for a study above, allowing the floor surface to be used as a desk.
The entire first floor is lined with lauan plywood. Internal windows allow views between rooms on this level, while skylights bring extra daylight in through the sloping roof above.
The house’s balcony stretches across the entire south facade. A garage is positioned underneath and can be accessed by sliding back an industrial metal door.
Concrete-block walls with occasional perforations enable a system of natural ventilation, with hot air released through a chimney at the rear.
Photography is by Shinkenchiku-sha.
Here’s a project description from Tato Architects:
House in Kawanishi
Layered Boundaries
The project presented an unusual challenge: A public walkway ran adjacent to the western boundary of the house. It narrowed awkwardly from a three metre-wide road on approach from the north to a mere seventy centimetres on the eastern border to the southern corner of the site. If walls had been built to the boundary of the site to protect the residents’ privacy from the many passers-by who used this path, the path would narrow oppressively and become more difficult for the area’s residents to use.
Instead, the ground floor was set back from the boundary to give space to the path and to give the impression that the full width of the path continued through. Then the second floor of the house was built back over the path, out to the boundary of the site and its border with the road. There is a glazed entrance area containing a shoe cabinet that appears to sit beyond the border between the public and private spaces. It sits reminiscent of a bus stop containing furniture brought there by neighbours.
This theme of crossing borders between road and site is carried through the entire house design. Using the line of the neighbour’s concrete block wall, a new block wall has been built through to the south, crossing an interior space to become the wall of a storage space. This harnesses the height differences originally found in the site.
The area above the storage space then forms a landing for the stairs, and the level of the first floor has been adjusted to function as a desk sitting over the landing. This creates a space that is partly a border between a floor and partly a desk. Seen from the street, the ground floor, the first floor, and the interior and the exterior all appear to cross over.
The interior walls of the upper volume are all lauan plywood, which creates a singular space that lives in clear contrast to the ground floor, which contains a variety of materials and features. The whole design suggests an evolving living space with features that appear to cross beyond boundaries yet control them at the same time.
Gaining anonymous knowledge
The house style called a “Queenslander” is a stilt house with a wooden structure and a balcony design specific to Queensland in Australia. While some researchers in Japan have studied it, I had little knowledge of it until I encountered photographs of Queenslander houses being lifted during their conversion and renovation from one to two-story structures. Since then, I have been interested in the form of this style of house.
By a curious coincidence, last year I received a request from an Australian man to design his house. I flew there in June in 2013 for the site research, where I found the city space was surprising. Most of the Queenslanders I saw had hipped roofs with overhangs that covered all of the exterior space of the house. These roofs were clad in corrugated iron, painted white or silver to reflect the heat. To facilitate ventilation, which is normally difficult with a hipped roof, ventilators were installed on top. During their conversion to their two-storey form, various additional house features were being built in under the lifted volumes.
It’s a design solution that mirrored my own thinking in the design of this house, which was under construction at that time. While I design my architecture, I am sometimes encouraged by the knowledge I gain from anonymous predecessors who have had to deal with similar matters beyond time and regions. It is a wonderful moment to be able to touch an unbroken line of history in architecture and accumulate knowledge from it.
The plan is defined by a grid, with four squares slightly shifted off centre, and a modified square hipped roof formed by raising it at the centre. The simple, slim rigid joint frame structure consists of 125mm×125mm square steel columns and 200mm×100m H section steel beams. It realises its strength through its stiffness, by the low ceiling height and by the column bases buried in the foundation.
On the edge of the eaves, small section flat steel pipes are inserted to channel the steel rafters around the structure. The concrete block wall on the ground floor stands without counterforts through the support of flat steel bars inserted into some of the block holes.
Location of site: Hyogo, Japan Site area: 120.54 sqm Building area: 59.84 sqm Total floor area: 107.73 sqm Type of Construction: steel Program: house Project by: Tato Architects Principal designer: Yo Shimada Structural engineer: S3 Associates Inc.
This Tokyo house by Japanese office Atelier Tekuto features a huge triangular window that angles up over the rooftops of surrounding houses to bring daylight in from above (+ slideshow).
The four-storey house is located within one of the city’s many dense residential areas, so Atelier Tekuto tried to make the most of natural light by framing a view of the sky and clouds, hence the project title Framing the Sky.
“We realise that skylights are the most important openings in urban houses,” said the architects. “It is because the sky is the only element of nature left in the urban context, and the skylight serves as an interface between people and nature.”
The huge window is positioned above a double-height living room on the second floor. It is set at an angle to bring light right across the space, and through to a kitchen and loft bedroom just behind.
“When you stand under this large skylight, you feel plenty of sunlight showering onto your body,” said the architects.
The two lower levels of the house both meet the ground, which allowed the architects to separate the main entrance from the garage access.
A small study sits behind the garage and has a ceiling of glass blocks to bring light in from above. These become the floor of the entrance corridor, leading residents through to a staircase that features wooden treads and a balustrade made of vertical pipes.
Wooden joinery features throughout, from the shelves and cupboards in the kitchen to desks, sideboards and seating areas elsewhere in the house.
This house is situated in an urban residential district at Aoyama in Tokyo. The polygon-shaped site has a 2.7 meter gap therefore we located the garage entrance on the basement floor on the south side and the main entrance to the house on the first floor on the west side.
The program requested by the clients are as follows; garage and bicycle parking space on the basement floor; main entrance, bathroom and master bedroom on the ground floor; Living room /dining space with kitchen on the second floor; and children’s room in the loft space. The main design concept of this house is “framing the sky”.
We focus on the relationship between nature and people in the city. We realise that skylights are the most important openings in the urban houses. It is because the sky is the only element of nature left in the urban context, and the skylight serves as an interface between people and nature.
The volume of the house is decided according to height restriction lines, and the size of the skylight is determined according to the maximum glass size.
When you stand under this large skylight, you feel a plenty of sunlight showering onto you body. It makes you feel that you are a part of nature in this blue urban sky.
Location: Tokyo, Japan Building use: private house Site area: 69.15m2 Building area: 38.72 sqm Total floor area: 77.44 sqm
Construction: Reinforced concrete (basement) + steel Architectural design: Yasuhiro Yamashita – Atelier Tekuto Constructional design: Jun Sato – Jun Sato Structural Engineers Construction management: Takahiro Watai – Nissho Kogyo Co.Ltd.
This house by Japanese architect Shogo Aratani clambers over a steep rocky site in Hyogo, so it was named Krampon after the spiky devices that strap onto shoes to improve grip for climbing (+ slideshow).
Shogo Aratani designed the two-storey house for a site with an 11-metre change of level from front to back, so he divided the building into a series of blocks that stagger up to follow the slope of the hill.
“We decided to place volumes along the sloped ground to minimise excavation,” said the architect. “We designed the spatial sequence in relation to the landscape by placing three volumes along contour lines.”
The three rectilinear volumes fan out around a triangular central section that accommodates the houses’s main staircase, but which also functions as a small library. Books can be stored on shelves around the three edges of the space, as well as within the gaps between treads.
The living rooms are all positioned on the upper floor of the house to offer the best views of the surrounding neighbourhood, and open to a large wooden roof deck.
A skylight above the living room reveals the branches of a camphor tree and cherry tree at the top of the site, while the kitchen features a stainless steel countertop and glass doors leading out to a narrow balcony.
Black powder-coated metal panels clad the exterior walls. There’s also a concrete retaining wall framing a driveway at the lowest level of the site.
Photography is by Yutaka Kinumaki.
Here’s a project description from Shogo Aratani:
Krampon
This is a residential area where the magnificent nature still remains. The site is situated on a sloped land among natural forest. Two large trees with beautifully shaped branches (one is a camphor tree and the other a cherry tree) stand on top of the site. These trees are integrated into the residential design.
The entire site is steeply sloped, and the gap between the top and the bottom is as large as approximately 11 meters. And the ground composed of a rock bed is extremely hard. Considering these landscape conditions, we decided to place volumes along the sloped ground to minimise excavation.
In order to provide the best view, the main spaces are located on the top floor and the other interior spaces are connected along the slope down to the street level. We designed the spatial sequence in relation to the landscape by placing three volumes along contour lines.
The upper volume is placed right underneath the two large trees. A skylight is provided in the living room to see the trees above. The volume on the north is allocated for bathroom. The volume on the lower level contains private rooms on the first floor and a wood-decked terrace on the roof, accessible from the living room. We place stairs with the same inclination as the ground at the intersection of the three volumes. The stair space is used as a library, while the stairs are designed to accommodate a large number of books.
By designing the three volumes along the landscape, diverse activities are generated and one can enjoy unique spatial sequences as they are.
A sizeable volume of rock was excavated upon construction of the garage, and it is reused as exterior finish on pavements and steps along the entryway.
Location: Hyogo, Japan Principal Use: House Structure: timber frame Site Area: 360.35 sqm Building Area: 104.53 sqm Total Floor Area: 136.65 sqm (84.05m2/1F, 52.60m2/2F) Structural Engineer: S3 Associates Inc. Construction: Amerikaya Co.,Ltd.
This tiny seaside home in Kanagawa by Japanese office Yasutaka Yoshimura Architects is contained within little more than a pair of oversized windows raised up on stilts (+ slideshow).
Yasutaka Yoshimura designed the small building as a weekend house for a single resident and positioned it on a site measuring just three by eight metres on the edge of Sagami Bay.
Named Window House, the residence holds all its living spaces in the narrow gap between two framed windows, which offer views west towards the distant Mount Fuji from both inside the house and behind it.
“It seemed too difficult to avoid blocking the view of the neighbourhood behind. So I designed a large opening of the same size as the sea side on the road side in order to keep the view passing through the building in the absence of the owner,” said Yoshimura.
“It stands between land and sea and became a house as a window to see through,” he added.
The house is raised off the ground on concrete pilotis to protect it from high tides. This creates a sheltered patio underneath with a view of the shoreline.
Concrete blocks with triangular profiles lead up into the house, arriving at a dining room and kitchen on the first floor. An indoor staircase ascends to a living room and then on to a tiny bedroom.
There’s also a small storage loft slotted beneath a floor, which can be accessed using a ladder that is fixed in a vertical position.
Toshiharu Naka of Tokyo-based Naka Studio added an asymmetric roof with overhanging eaves to this house in a Japanese skiing village to create a huge sheltered terrace for residents (+ slideshow).
Located within a patch of woodland in Nagano Prefecture, Villa in Hakuba was designed to adapt to a dramatically changing climate that switches between heavy snowfall in winter and soaring temperatures in summer.
Toshiharu Naka said he wanted to create a house that could open itself up to the surrounding woods, unlike the typical houses of the area that are raised a metre off the ground to protect them from deep snow.
“As a result, these houses are visually and functionally separated from the surrounding nature,” he explained.
To avoid this, the architect built a large polycarbonate roof canopy that shelters both the house and patio from snowfall.
“This large roof, made of polycarbonate panels to bear the weight of severe snow, is transparent to gain a lot of sunlight onto the roofed terrace. So, we can enjoy time and light in the forest,” he added.
Three ladders are positioned around the edges so that residents can hang curtains around the terrace. In summer these are nets to keep out mosquitoes, while in winter they are made of plastic to keep the heat in.
Sliding glass doors connect the patio with the main family room, which accommodates living, dining and kitchen areas, but can also be transformed into a bedroom by extending the length of a built-in bench.
Stairs lead up to a small study on an intermediate floor, then continue up to a larger bedroom space on the first floor.
The bathroom is housed within a small shed at the centre of the terrace and residents can use one of the ladders to climb onto its roof.
Exterior walls are clad with pale cedar siding and a concrete floor slab enables a passive geothermal heating system that gently warms and cools the house.
Photography is by Torimura Koichi.
Read on for a project description from Toshiharu Naka:
Villa in Hakuba
This small villa is an environmental device, where we can find ourselves as a part of nature throughout the year.
This villa is built in Hakuba, famous for its international snow resort. In this area, many houses have ground floor, which is set at 1 metre high from the ground because of the deep snow. As a result, these houses are visually and functionally separated from the surrounding nature.
So, I set the large roof upon the site at first, which enables a floor continuous with the ground level. This large roof, made of polycarbonate panels to bear the weight of severe snow, is transparent to gain a lot of sunlight onto the roofed terrace. So, we can enjoy time and light in the forest.
These architectural components work as a passive system at the same time. The floor, continuous with the ground, gains geothermal heat to store the slab under the floor. Surrounding snow works as an insulation in an environment below the freezing point. The transparent roof builds double skin, which enables natural ventilation by sunlight in summer and avoids ice dam problem in winter.
A wooden ladder and a pair of winding steel staircases link the rooms of this lofty house in Sapporo, Japan, by Jun Igarashi Architects (+ slideshow).
Named Case, the three-storey residence was designed by Japanese firm Jun Igarashi Architects to centre around a family living room with a seven-metre-high ceiling, from which residents can see into almost every other room of the house.
The first of two lightweight steel staircases curves up from the living room to lead to a wooden mezzanine just below the roof, which can be used as a study, a children’s playroom, or simply as a corridor.
Another staircase winds down from this level to a bedroom on a second mezzanine, while a third platform is positioned directly above and can be accessed by climbing a wooden ladder that clips around the edge of the floor.
All three wooden lofts are connected to ceiling by slender steel rods, which double as supports for handrails that extend around both the floors and the staircases.
A full-height partition runs along one side of the living room to separate it from the adjacent kitchen, but a large rectangular hole in its centre allows a view into not only this space, but the bedroom and storage level overhead.
Rather than adding simple doorways between rooms on the ground floor, the architects built three curvy corridors that extend out beyond the house’s rear wall. One leads to bathroom spaces at the back, while another sits at the end of a long and narrow entrance lobby.
Externally, the house is surrounded by vertical wires that the architects hope will become a framework for climbing plants.
Here’s a short project description from Jun Igarashi Architects:
Case
This house is located on the suburb of the city of Sapporo. The site is a typical suburban subdivision and height difference between the road is large. Footprint isdetermined by building coverage and wall retreat of the architectural law and the slope of the site approach.
I set the long corridor of entrance as a buffer zone (windbreak room) between the large heat load space.
Because of the site area is small, to set the buffer space into the inside is difficult. So I spread the thoughts and invent the space of growing plant on stainless steel wire around the house as the new type of buffer zone between outside and inside.
Location: Sapporo, Hokkaido Principal use: Private residence Design period: 2011 Construction period: 2011-2012
Architects: Jun Igarashi Architects Structural engineer: Daisuke Hasegawa & Partners Construction firm: Oooka Industry
Site area: 197.50 sqm Building area: 50.52 sqm Total floor area: 80.84 sqm Number of storeys: 3 above ground Structure: Timber frame
A geometric pattern of skylights frames views of the sky from inside this angular white residence in Tokyo by Japanese firm Atelier Tekuto (+ slideshow).
Named Monoclinic House, the building was designed by Atelier Tekuto to accommodate a small three-level home for the client as well as a pair of compact studio apartments for rent.
When viewed from the street, the house appears to have no perpendicular edges. The skylights, which comprise a square and four triangles, are positioned on a diagonal surface that could be described as a wall or a ceiling.
“We have designed a few polyhedron houses, as they are often effective solutions in small and congested lots in urban residential districts,” said the architects, explaining how the angular surfaces also help rainwater to drain off the walls.
The main residence is positioned at the front of the building. The living room is on the first floor and benefits from a five metre-high ceiling at the front, allowing the skylights to bring daylight through both this space and a mezzanine bedroom above.
“One of the key concepts was to ‘design the sky’, because when designing a house in an urban context surrounded by buildings, the sky is the most important natural element in direct contact with architecture,” added the architects. “The top plane of this polyhedron form becomes a large top light, connecting the living space with the sky.”
A spiralling staircase with cantilevered metal treads leads down to another room that can be used as a garage or workshop, while the two single-room apartments are tucked away behind.
Entrances are positioned at different points around the perimeter, including one that is recessed into a narrow front wall.
All of the outer walls are covered with white render, while concrete surfaces are left exposed throughout the building’s interior.
This house consists of a garage and two studio-type apartments for rent. Our client asked me to design architecture similar to “Reflection of Mineral” that we completed in 2006. Therefore basic concepts of ‘Mineral’ are taken into consideration. In order to further evolve from our previous design we focus on the following three issues:
1. Form should be carefully considered to protect white walls from dirt from rainwater. 2. Design and detailing of large skylight 3. Selection of materials to minimise cost.
The living room provides a unique and impressive space; it is narrow (15.8 m2 in floor area), its highest ceiling height is 5.5 metres, and a large quadrilateral skylight (18.2m2) connects the space to the sky. Square panel, punctured with smaller square in the middle, is inscribed in the quadrilateral shape, and dramatic contrast of light and shadow provides a new perceptive experience.
I have been exploring possibilities of polyhedron architecture in small lots of Tokyo for ten years. Moreover it is my long-time challenge to liberate one’s five senses with eye-opening spatial. This project is one of such successful cases.
Date of completion: September 2013 Location: Setagaya-ku, Tokyo Program: Private house + apartments for rent Site area: 85.92 sqm Building area: 42.61 sqm Total floor area: 90.82 sqm Structure: Reinforced concrete Architectural design: Yasuhiro Yamashita and Azusa Ishii/Atelier Tekuto Structural engineer: Jun Sato and Yoshihiro Fukushima/Sato Structural Engineers Construction: Yoshiya Uchida and Masaru Shibasaki/Uchida Sangyo
Trees line the protruding balconies of this concrete house in Nagoya, Japan, by Tokyo studio Ryo Matsui Architects (+ slideshow).
Named Balcony House, the four-storey dwelling was designed by Ryo Matsui Architects with three large balconies and a roof terrace that give views of the surrounding city, but are also screened behind planted trees.
“The two metre wide balcony becomes the buffer area with the road and takes on the function of eaves,” said the architect. “We suggest that the balconies have a beneficial influence, not only for the interior, but they become part of the new cityscape.”
Trees planted on the first and the second floor balconies can grow taller through openings in the floor slabs above.
A side entrance leads into the house and ascends directly upstairs, bypassing two parking spaces and a study on the ground floor.
A child’s playroom is located towards the rear of the first floor, while a glass wall exposes the stairwell and an en suite bedroom lined with wooden panels opens out onto the first balcony.
On the second floor, dark wooden panels cover the walls and ceilings of the kitchen and living room, contrasting with sections of exposed concrete that shows the marks of its timber formwork.
The third floor features a bathroom and a walk-in-wardrobe, accessed by a central corridor. An L-shaped balcony with timber decking wraps around the front bedroom.
A outdoor staircase lead up from the third balcony to the roof terrace, which features an al fresco dining area with plants built into the decking.
In the residential area which have a low-rise building apartment complex and new houses with small balconies, we designed RC 4-floor house.
In Japan, especially the centre of Tokyo, the house next to each other extremely approaches the site boundary.
Axonometric showing balcony exterior
Although it is the place where we want to expect the openness to the frontal road necessarily, the site facing each other is the same condition.
Ground floor
There are small balconies, and the planters for blindfolds.
First floor
It is not exaggeration even if it is said that balconies influence the cityscape in the crowd place of the residential area. The two-metre wide balcony becomes the buffer area with the road and takes on the function of eaves.
Second floor
Getting plants grown wild by keeping enough depth of the balconies, it is higher than an upper balcony and brought it up. We suggest that the balconies have a beneficial influence not only for the interior, but they become part of the new cityscape.
Third floor
Project name: Balcony House Building Site: Minato-ku Tokyo Architect: Ryo Matsui Architects Inc. Structure Design: Akira Suzuki / ASA Principal use: Private house
Rooftop balcony
Architectural Area: 118.58 m² Total Floor Area: 202.6 m² 1st Floor Area: 113.41 m² 2nd Floor Area: 106.67 m² 3rd Floor Area: 113.41 m² 4th Floor Area: 106.67 m² Main Structure: Reinforced Concrete Design Period: 2011.7-2012.6 Construction Period: 2012.7-2013.2
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