Hasta La Ideas

Japanese architects Akinari Tanaka, POI, Nawakenjimu and Lapin have completed this diamond-shaped house in Kokura, Japan, with a ledge in one corner for climbing up to the roof terrace.

The Kokura Tanaka House is split into quarters by two crossing walls in the centre, creating four equal rooms that each have access to outdoor terraces.

The small plot is surrounded by the perimeter walls of neighbouring residences, which are now painted in the same shade as the new house to make it feel less hemmed-in.

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Photography is by Kei Sugimoto.

More information is provided by the architects below:

Kokura Tanaka House

This is the project that the client returned to the birthplace after the retirement and rebuilt an old house. He requested sunny one-storied house with good ventilation.

But there was a problem that an erstwhile quiet green residential area was changed into densely built-up area, and moreover neighbour’s concrete block wall surrounded his flagpole shape site. And there was a sense of being oppressed.

So we tried the design “Shakuhei”(=Borrowed wall) to turn this bad condition to the advantage. Incorporating beautiful landscape is usual method at “Shakkei”, but this project “Shakuhei” is a trial to incorporating neighbour’s ordinary concrete block wall. Therefore, we dared to make the house with a concrete block wall.

Firstly, we cut this site into pieces on a cross with concrete block wall. Secondly, we put one roof over the top of the wall. As a result, in all rooms we obtained scenery that our wall and neighbour’s wall are seen at the same time.

In a word, it is felt that neighbours’ walls are own walls. And we feel this house compact but large, because each rooms have a garden.

Further, we got a sense of unity and a reflection effect by painting neighbour’s wall white with their consent. However, we want not only to borrow the wall from neighbours but also to build the relation of win-win. So that, we secured the neighbor’s sunny space with good breeze by making the flat roof terrace and painting it white.

The air inlets are familiar screen blocks in a Japanese town. And the air outlets are simple holes but manual regulation of air volume is possible.

Architects: Akinari Tanaka+POI+Nawakenjimu+Lapin
Location: Kokura,Japan
Project area: 67 sqm
Site area: 247 sqm
Project year: 2009-2010

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Belly House by Tomohiro Hata	New Kyoto Town House by ALPHAville	Nest by UID

This Tokyo house by Japanese architects Key Operation has been designed around the movements of the client’s pet cat, writes Yuki Sumner.

Stepping-stone shelves allow a cat to move between rooms in The Cat House through high level openings, without using the landing and stairs.

With integrated book shelves, the landing doubles up as a library and study.

Above photograph is by Keizo Shibasaki.

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Photography is by Key Operation, apart from where otherwise stated.

The following is from the architects:

Neko no Ie (The Cat House)

A century ago, the famous Japanese novelist Sosuke Natsume wrote a novel called “I Am a Cat (Wagahai Wa Neko De Aru).” It is written from the point of view of a cat.

The cat, who remains nameless during the novel’s first chapter, lives in a house with a teacher and his family. He is angry that he is not regarded as an equal member of the family in this household. “I will never catch mice,” the cat announces haughtily, not wishing to make himself useful.

What if, however, there was a house, which has been designed specifically with a cat in mind? What would it look like? The Japanese architect Akira Koyama of Key Operation Inc. has recently designed a house for a young family, which included a pet cat, in the densely populated Taishido district, west of Tokyo. Undoubtedly, this house would have made Natsume’s cat green with envy.

Neko no Ie (The Cat House) stands on a typically compact, rectilinear site (7 meters wide, 12 meters deep) along a narrow residential street, just big enough for a single car to pass through.

Above photograph is by Keizo Shibasaki.

Although the plot is small, the client (including the cat) did not specify the need for an outdoor garden space, and so the architect decided to set the house back by 3 meters from the street, thereby creating a void, synonymous in Japan with a sense of luxury.

The upper section of the house is further set back from the ground level, generating a balcony. It is generally perceived that the Japanese architects have a greater freedom of expression than the Western counterparts but we forget that there are a number of restrictions that the Japanese architects face when designing buildings in Japan, and this is no exception.

There is a law, for example, restricting the owning of a car to those who can ensure its parking space. Neko no Ie, like many houses on the street, accommodates a garage within the house.

Above photograph is by Keizo Shibasaki.

The architect faced yet another restriction imposed in this area. It forbade the use of bright colours on exterior facades so that the ‘scenery’ of the area is conserved. Neko no Ie’s grey stucco façade complies with this regulation.

Undeterred, however, Koyama subtly managed to subvert both of these restrictions by painting the inside of the garage bright pink, therefore making a feature out of what is usually a dark and dingy space and injecting much-needed playfulness in this otherwise boring grey neighbourhood.

The house’s asymmetrical roofline maximizes both its playfulness as well as its volume. The architect has created within a complex interior space consisting of rooms of varying sizes, which are stack on top of each other over three floors.

One would not be able to observe such a structure from outside of the house, but it reflects the layout of the area, which has a mixture of detached houses, both large and small.

The biggest room in the house is the dining/living room, stretched horizontally to fit the whole width of the house. By also extending the room vertically, the architect has opened up this room to the rest of the house.

What look like shelves jutting out of one wall of this room are actually steppingstones for the pet cat to enter into the adjacent rooms through the openings placed higher up on the wall.

This arrangement leaves the ample staircase and landings, which double up as a library, undisturbed from the burst of activities of the feline member of the family, while the rest of the family uses them as a place of quietude.

Moreover, just as the garage became the visual focal point for the exterior of the house, the staircase, painted also brightly pink, signals a gathering of all the separate interior sections of Neko no Ie.

Above photograph is by Keizo Shibasaki.

By varying the sizes of the rooms and painting them in different colours, the architect has emphasized their uniqueness and separateness.

Above photograph is by Keizo Shibasaki.

At the same time, he has managed to link the rooms through small and large openings so that none of the rooms is completely isolated. Autonomy is respected but isolation is discouraged.

For instance, a large opening in the wall of the dining/living room, which looks into the kitchen, allows the person who is cooking to connect with the person who is being served.

In the meantime, the cat can slip into the study located above the kitchen through yet another, this time smaller, opening.

The rooms’ co-dependence is thus implicitly emphasized.

Neko no Ie is a symbolic celebration of the emergence of the modern Japanese family, more democratic than the traditional one preceding it, allowing each member to flourish independently while nurturing a supportive environment.

Ironically, a pet cat was an integral part of it.

Text by Yuki Sumner, 2011

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Yachiyo by Atelier Tekuto	House by Yoshio Oono Architect & Associates	House in Fukuyama by Suppose Design Office

This farmhouse in Hokkaido by Japanese studio Hiroshi Horio Architects has a pointed observation deck where residents dry herbs.

In a rural location surrounded by arable fields, Tohma House has a large kitchen, living area and basement where various crops are prepared and stored during harvest seasons.

Rooms are divided across split-levels, connected to one another by both ladders and stairs.

The cast-concrete and timber structure of the house is left exposed on the interior, with a wood-burning stove located in one corner.

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The following information is from the architects:

Tohma House

There exists the family life running harmoniously along the time of nature.

Dreamt of creating a new home for the family where their lives would nestle deep in nature, step by step we weave precious matters into our design.

Living in harmony with nature

The site is located on the rural outskirts of Tohma, Hokkaido.

The father works as a mountain guide, the mother paints with watercolors, and the son attends primary school and they live, work and farm together.

The family had been renting the farm house left behind by the farmer’s retirement.

However they welcomed the opportunity of having the grandmother, who had been living by herself, to start designing their new house.

After living in the area for some time, the family was longing to have a firewood stove could run through the night.

They normally have to get up in the middle of the night to add more firewood in order to beat the early morning cold.

This experience has taught them that fire wood is one of the most economical heat resources, regardless of the effort it takes to keep the stove running.

The lowest temperature during the midwinter in Tohma could go as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius, which reiterates the fundamental functions of houses to provide a well-insulated enclosure for families.

Family life revolves around the changing seasons.

At the end of winter, seedlings are planted.

The land is cultivated with the melting of the snow and various crops are nurtured until they are ready to be harvested in the fall.

The harvested crops are used for family meals, and they are also processed to be made into snacks or preserved food, to be sold as part of their family business.

We were very moved by the way the family coexisted with nature’s severity, when we first heard the story about their everyday life throughout the year, probably because we felt their life is running along the course of nature, spontaneously.

Space Composition

Through the large window in the lower level hall furnished with the firewood stove, you can enjoy the scenic view over rice fields and the Daisetsuzan Volcanic Group.

The interior spaces are filled with the natural light filtering through the FRP grating observation deck of the loft where the family dry herbs.

In plan, the central open living space, the kitchen and the basement storage are laid out in a functional manner to manage plentiful harvests.

The tower like composition of such spaces forms multiple layers one on top of the other as if the natural light from the top was its core.

The interior space with these continuous layers has the atmosphere of a barn attic.

Each individual can have their personal space, and still feel intimate with each other.

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House by Kazunori Fujimoto Architect & Associates	Tsumuji+Hako by UID Architects	House by Yutaka Yoshida Architect & Associates

The facade of this single family house near Basel by Swiss architects andOFFICE steps back to frame a wooden terrace.

The two-storey LandyM house has four bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs, with lightwells illuminating a further two bedrooms in the basement.

The house features a roof garden and glazed windows from floor to ceiling on two sides of the ground floor.

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The following information is from the architects:

Completion of LandyM – Single family home near Basel, Switzerland

The building made of solid wood construction combines compact, efficiently organised serving uses with a spatious and open living area.

A strong integration of the terraces generates an amply spatial feeling: a wooden deck partly enclosed by wall and ceiling enlarges the living zone into the garden while the facade loop, a horizontal extension of the greige-colored plaster surfaces, surrounds it in order to connect it with the interior and to link it with the roof garden.

The upper floor is super flexible with minimised supporting structures, 2 bathrooms and up to 4 bedrooms which can be arranged individually.

The high quality cladding consists of renewable resources and guarantees a low demand of thermal heat served by a wood stove with vision panel.

LandyM – maximising the felt living area

Main concept of the cost effective single family home consists of an innovative spatial organisation, interesting and sophisticated outside areas and high flexibilty during lifecycle to enable the inhabitants open future plans.

The building combines compact, efficiently organised serving area with a spatious and open living area. Soft zoning instead of sharp space borders maximise the felt living area as well as a strong integration of the terraces: a wooden deck partly enclosed by wall and ceiling enlarges the living zone on two whole building sides into the garden.

It generates an open morning terrace faced to Southeast while the main terrace towards Southwest is covered by the cantilevering upper floor.

The facade loop, a horizontal extension of the greige-colored plaster surfaces made of gravel, surrounds the terraces in order to connect it with the interior and to link it to the roof garden with its fantastic view towards Black Forrest and Vogese.

The 1st floors flexible plan enables the inhabitants open future plans. Up to 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms can be arranged individually and guarantee by minimised supporting structures a suitable configuration for every section of life. The fully insulated basement serves two additional bedrooms with comfortable lightwells.

The sustainable organisation corresponds with construction and services. The high quality cladding is built in solid wood construction and excellent wood fibre insulation and therefore consists of renewable resources. The combination with triple glazed windows in wood-aluminium construction leads to a low demand of thermal heat. An excellent interior climate is generate by the airtight but permeable wall construction that enables an easy interior completion with services on the clients own account.

Thermal energy is mainly served by a wood stove with vision panel and storage unit. It is the traditional family centre in the living zone. Heat-recovery ventilation, solar collector and usage of rain water complete the simple and ecological aware concept.

Simplicity is continued in terms of surfaces: Supporting elements are used as visible interior surfaces: The groundfloor is covered with waxed floor screed, prefabricated stairways in concrete contrast to uncovered wooden walls with a simple industrial finishing. Significant oak boards and furnitures as well as slick white plastered walls generate an exciting interplay of traditional and innovative materials.

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Outside the greige-colored plaster facade corresponds with bronze anodised aluminium and pregreyed irregular boards of  larch wood. It coveres terrace floors and adjoined facades and creates a haptic and visual experience of outside living.

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Credits

Architecture:
andOFFICE architecure and more
Dipl. Ing. Architekt Thorsten Blatter
Gaußstr. 39, D-70193 Stuttgart, Germany

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Copyrights: andOFFICE Thorsten Blatter

location: near Basel, Switzerland
completion: März march 2011
plot: 651 m2
living area: 199 m2
addtitional area: 34 m2
living area: 56 m2
felt living area:106 m2
felt area = living area x andOFFICE
construction: solid wood construction
insulation: wood fibre insulation 26 cm

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Charrat Transformation by clavienrossier	Parish House by Frei + Saarinen Architects	House by Marchal + Fürstenberger Architects

This house outside Warsaw by Polish architect Robert Konieczny transforms from a villa by day to a fortress by night.

Called Safe House, the residence shuts down to a safe central core with a drawbridge, a shutter that drops down to cover an entire facade and massive wall panels that block out all the windows.

The thick courtyard walls slide back into the house.

The drawbridge leads to the roof of an adjacent building that houses a swimming pool.

Photography is by Aleksander Rutkowski.

More stories about projects in Poland on Dezeen »

Here is some more information from Robert Konieczny:

Safe House

Location

The house is situated in a small village at the outskirts of Warsaw. The surroundings are dominated with usual “polish cubes” from the sixties and old wooden barns.

Idea

The clients’ top priority was to gain the feeling of maximum security in their future house, which determined the building’s outlook and performance. The house took the form of a cuboid in which parts of the exterior walls are movable.

When the house opens up to the garden, eastern and western side walls move towards the exterior fence creating a courtyard.

After crossing the gate one has to wait in this safety zone before being let inside the house. In the same time, there is no risk of children escaping to the street area in an uncontrolled way while playing in the garden.

Movable elements interfering with the site layout

The innovation of this idea consists in the interference of the movable walls with the urban structure of the plot. Consequently, when the house is closed (at night for example) the safe zone is limited to the house’s outline.

In the daytime, as a result of the walls opening, it extends to the garden surrounding the house.

New type of building

The sliding walls are not dependent on the form of the building.

That is why this patent can be applied to both modern and traditional, single- and multi – storeyed houses covered with roofs of different geometry.

This universal solution we came up with gives a new type of building where not the form but the way of functioning is the most important. The name: “safe house” gains a new meaning now.

Mechanic…

Accomplishment of this idea required the use of technically complex solutions.

The most significant are the sliding walls (both 2,2 m high, 22 and 15 m long), which allow to interfere with the urban structure and determine the safe zone of the plot.

They are not the only mobile elements of the building.

Apart from these, there are large shutters (all 2,8 m high, with a width ranging up to 3,5 m, opening up to 180 degrees) and a drawbridge leading to the roof terrace above the swimming pool.

The southern elevation is closed by an enormous roll-down gate of 14 and 6 m manufactured by a company normally supplying shipyards and air companies.

It is made with white anodized aluminum which makes it possible to function as a movie projection screen.

All the movable elements are based on built-in electronic engines, that guarantee safe operation.

The whole building is a concrete monolith, while it’s mobile parts – for the sake of considerable size – are light steel trusses filled with mineral wool.

As a result, the building is perfectly insulated when closed.

The whole house as well as the mobile elements are clad with cement-bonded particleboards – Cetris and waterproof alder plywood fixed to a steel construction and painted with dark wood stain, which resembles the wood widely found on the surrounding houses and barns, and makes it fit well into the rural landscape.

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… to Organic

Once the house opens, it’s bright and spacious interior merges extensively with the garden.

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Wide glazings behind the movable walls let the building acquire energy during the day (winter) or prevent the sun’s heat from going into the house (summer).

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At night, when the house is closed, the thick outer layer helps the building to accumulate the gained energy.

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Such a solution together with the hybrid heat system (most of the energy is gained from renewable sources – heat pump and solar systems supported with gas heating) and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery makes the house become an intelligent passive building.

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Every day the house acts in a similar way – it wakes up every morning to close up after the dusk. This routine reminds of the processes occurring in nature – the house resembles a plant in its day and night cycle.

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architect: Robert Konieczny
collaboration: Marcin Jojko, Łukasz Zadrzyński
interior design: Magdalena Radałowicz-Zadrzyńska
site area: 2500 m2
usable floor area: 567m2
volume: 1719m3
design: 2004-2005
construction: 2005-2009

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Torreagüera Vivienda Atresada by Xpiral	Potasze House by Neostudio Architekci	House in Fukuyama by Suppose Design Office