Hasta La Ideas

A rock garden filled with trees and shrubs is sandwiched between glazed rooms and floating windowless walls at this house in Japan by mA-style Architects (+ slideshow).

Japanese studio mA-style Architects designed the house for a residential site in Fujieda, Sizuoka Prefecture. The architects felt that residents would be better off without a view of their surroundings, so they designed an insular house with a private garden.

Named Green Edge House, the residence is surrounded on all sides by the narrow garden and glazed walls to allow residents to open every room out to the greenery.

“At first we imagined a house with an inner courtyard. However, indoor privacy is not kept in the architecture around the courtyard,” explained architects Atushi and Mayumi Kawamoto.

“The transparency of the glass weakens consciousness of a partition between inside and outside. Then the green edge becomes a vague domain without a border,” they added.

A blank white wall encases the house and garden, but hovers 65 millimetres above the floor so that daylight can filter into the house without compromising residents’ privacy.

As they chose not to add a courtyard, the architects positioned the living room and kitchen at the centre of the house, with a bedroom and entrance on one side, and a Japanese room and bathroom on the other.

The toilet and washbasin sit beyond the perimeter of the other rooms, so residents have to venture into the garden to use them.

Atushi and Mayumi Kawamoto founded mA-style Architects in 2004. Other projects by the duo include a house where rooms are contained inside two-storey boxes and a residence that points outwards like a giant rectangular telescope.

Photography is by Makoto Yasuda, Nacasa & Partners.

Here’s a longer description from mA-style Architects:

Ryokuen no Su (Green Edge House)

Design Plan

There was the building site on a gently sloping hill. It is land for sale by the lot made by recent land adjustment here. The land carries the mountains on its back in the north side and has the rich scenery which can overlook city in the south side. However, it was hard to feel the characteristic of the land because it was a residential area lined with houses here. Consideration to the privacy for the neighbourhood was necessary in a design here because it was a residential area.

Therefore at first we imagined a house with an inner court having a courtyard. However, indoor privacy is not kept in the architecture around the courtyard. In addition, light and the air are hard to circulate, too. Therefore we wanted to make a house with an inner court having a vague partition.

At first we float an outer wall of 2,435mm in height 800mm by Chianti lever from the ground. We make a floating wall by doing it this way. While a floating wall of this simple structure disturbs the eyes from the neighbourhood, we take in light and air. A green edge is completed when we place trees and a plant along this floating wall. That’s why we called the house “Green Edge”. The green edge that was a borderland kept it intact and located a living room or a bedroom, the place equipped with a water supply for couples in the centre of the court. Then a green edge comes to snuggle up when in the indoor space even if wherever. In addition, we planned it so that nature could affect it with a person equally by assuming it a one-story house.

A green edge and the floating wall surrounded the house, but considered it to connect space while showing an internal and external border by using the clear glass for materials. The transparency of the glass weakens consciousness of a partition between inside and outside. Then the green edge becomes a vague domain without a border. The vagueness brings a feeling of opening in the space. In addition, the floating obstacle that made the standard of a body and the life function in a standard succeeds for the operation of the eyes of people.

It is like opening, and a green edge and the floating wall produce space with the transparency while being surrounded. The space changes the quality with the four seasons, too. This house where the change of the four seasons was felt with a body became the new house with an inner court which expressed the non-functional richness.

The Green Edge House does not change the inside and outside definitely.

There is the approach in migratory of green edge and the floating wall. The green edge along the floating wall is the grey area that operated space and a function from a human physical standard and the standard of the life function. We arrange the opening to a physical standard. Act in itself to pass through the floating wall becomes the positioning of the approach as psychological recognition.

In the Green Edge House, various standards make mutual relations each and operate space. For example, as the human physical dimension, standing is 1500-1800mm, and sitting is 820-990mm. On the other hand, as the human working dimension, 750-850mm on the desk, and 730-750mm in the washstand are normally scale. From the module that such a human physical standard and the standard of the life function, floating wall was set with 650mm from the floor, 800mm from the ground.

By doing so, we created the domains where the eyes of the people does not cross of inside and outside. It leads to a feeling of opening for the living people. The floating wall shows an internal and external border. On the other hand, transparency of the glass weakens internal and external difference. With the operation of the standard, and it raises excursion characteristics not to toe the mark.

The Green Edge House is the house which was rich in the variety that balance of the space was planned by a building and a physical standard.

Location: Fujieda – City Sizuoka Japan
Date of Completion: December　2012
Principal Use: House
Structure: steel construction

Site Area: 200.90m2
Total Floor Area: 73.01 m2
Structural Engineer: Nakayama Kashiro
Exterior Finish: Fibre reinforced plastic waterproofing
Floor: Birch wood flooring
Wall: cloth
Ceiling: cloth

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has a hidden garden around its perimeter appeared first on Dezeen.

Small attic spaces are tucked between the ribs of a triangular roof at this house extension in Japan by mA-style Architects (+ slideshow).

Japanese firm mA-style Architects designed the timber roof as a series of V-shaped frames, which sit over a rectilinear base and create triangular windows at each end.

Added to the west side of a family house, the Koya No Sumika extension provides a separate living and dining space for a couple and is connected to the main building by a glass and timber passageway.

“The young couple desired feelings of ease and spaces that ensure quiet and comfortable times,” said the architects. “The extension is designed as a minimum living space and pursues both maintaining distance and retaining fertile relationships.”

Small pockets slotted into the sides of the living area provide storage spaces for books and plants, as well as study areas with wooden desks and chairs.

A set of protruding wooden stairs and a separate ladder lead to the compact attic spaces overhead, as well as to a bed deck at the front of the building.

Bare light bulbs hang down from the triangular ceiling sections to illuminate the space.

Other mA-style Architects projects we’ve featured are an elevated house in the shape of a giant rectangular telescope, a wooden house lifted off the ground and curved like the hull of a boat and a metal-clad house with a smaller wooden house inside. See more Japanese houses »

Photography is by Kai Nakamura.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Koya No Sumika

This is an extension plan for a young couple’s house next to the main house. The main house is a one story Japanese style house with about 200m2, which is commonly seen in rural areas.

It is a big house with many rooms and mainly consists of large spaces for people to gather and to provide hospitality. However, the young couple desired feelings of ease and spaces that ensure quiet and comfortable times.

A simple extension may enable each of the house’s residents to live completely separated, but the relationship between the families and the connection with the main house might be lost.

Therefore, by utilising the functions for living in the main house, the extension is designed as a minimum living space, and pursues both maintaining distance and retaining fertile relationships.

The extension is attached by a connecting-corridor on the west side of the main house. This enables the residents to switch their mindset before entering into the other living space, and the common garden maintains a proper sense of distance. By relying on the main house for the large kitchen, bathroom, and future children’s room, only a few functions for a living space are required for the extended part.

The living spaces are aggregated into a simple continuous structure, which consists of small, 2m high, U-shaped bearing walls. A V-beam roof truss is made with 62mm panels and structural plywood on both sides, and it is topped with a 69mm thin roof.

By overlapping the bearing walls and the V-beam frame, and by using a variety of finishes, contrasting spaces are created and a sense of scale in the vertical direction is born in the flat house. By doing so, as the residents’ living scenes unfold, light and air freely circulate in the space, and the people’s lines-of-sight extend beyond the area in a state of freedom. We intended to leave a rich blank space that fosters the imaginations of the residents.

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mA-style Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Part of this wooden house in Japan by mA-style architects is lifted off the ground and curved like the hull of a boat (+ slideshow).

Glass screens on opposite sides of the living room separate the level floor surface from the curved outer edges, creating balconies that double up as sun loungers.

Positioned at the building’s centre, the room is sandwiched between a pair of narrow two-storey wings that contain the other rooms of the two-bedroom family home.

A kitchen and dining room are located in the east wing, where a ridged wooden ceiling arches up around the edges of the children’s bedroom above.

The master bedroom and bathroom occupy the two floors of the opposite wing, which is only just wide enough to fit a double bed inside.

Entrances to the house are positioned on both sides of this wing and lead in through a concealed porch.

This year mA-style architects also completed a metal-clad house with a smaller wooden house inside.

See more Japanese houses on Dezeen, including a residence with sunken rooms and curved balconies and a house shaped like an arrow.

See more projects in Japan »

Photography is by Kai Nakamura.

Here’s a few project details from mA-style architects:

Project name: Mascara House
Location: Shizuoka, Hamamatsu-City, Japan

Program: Single family house

Site Area: 232.02 sq m

Building Area: 82.46 sq m

Gross Floor Area: 111.44 sq m

Year: Completion: May 2011

Project by: mA-style architects

Principal Designers: Atsushi Kawamoto, Mayumi Kawamoto

Ground floor plan

First floor plan

Section – click above for larger image

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mA-style architects appeared first on Dezeen.