Hasta La Ideas

Treatment rooms sit within a translucent house-shaped enclosure at this dental clinic in Kobe, Japan, by Tato Architects (+ slideshow).

Japanese studio Tato Architects started the renovation by stripping the interior back to the concrete and painting it white, before adding the translucent central volume to accommodate three separate treatment areas.

Wooden screens partition the central space. The walls comprise a film-coated glass, while the ceiling is made from sheets of translucent polycarbonate.

Architect Yo Shimada says the softened lighting of the space help patients to feel more comfortable: “We aimed to produce an space which is clean and peaceful at the same time by controlling the state of light.”

“The translucent material was chosen for lighting the consultation rooms only by the light transmitted through, so that light sources would not offend the eye of the patient in the tilted dental chair,” he added.

A waiting room and reception are positioned at the front of the clinic and furnished with square stools, wooden bookshelves and potted plants.

Bare light bulbs hang down from the ceiling, while a children’s playroom faces out to the street.

A dental laboratory, X-ray facility and sterilising rooms are tucked away at the back.

This is second project completed by Tato Architects this month, following a house in Osaka that references the ad-hoc extensions of neighbouring buildings.

Photography is by Yuko Tada.

Here’s a short description from the architects:

Dental Clinic in Nakayamate

The interior of the room was of rather coarse RC and in skeleton state. We painted the interior white and inserted a house type of translucent material to get the ceiling as high as possible without a touch on RC beams. This resulted in getting calm, peaceful consultation rooms.

The translucent material was chosen for lighting the consultation rooms only by the light transmitted through so that light sources may not offend the eye of the patient in the tilted dental chair.

A medical facility tends to become functional, cold space after all due to the indispensable requirement such as contamination-proof. I am of the opinion that we can produce an space which is clean and peaceful at the same time by controlling the state of light.

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by Tato Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Wooden furniture forms sections of staircases at this house in Japan by Tato Architects (+ slideshow).

Japanese studio Tato Architects incorporated items of furniture into the circulation and structure of the three-storey house in Itami, a city in Hyōgo Prefecture.

“Architecture and furniture are mingled,” said architect Yo Shimada. “I keep trying to create freedom in rooms as if all of [the furniture] is just randomly placed and used by chance.”

Steps up from the middle floor are created by solid drawers that appear to be pulled out from a dresser, which can still store items inside. A low coffee table provides the first tread.

The furniture fills the gaps between an otherwise white metal staircase ascending to the top floor.

“I always think the way of dealing with stairs is important in houses, especially in small ones, said Shimada. “One of the general methods is to place a stair at the middle of one room allocating functions on both sides.”

This central floor functions as an open-plan living space, with the slightly raised seating area connected to the kitchen via two small tables.

A small toilet is housed in what looks like a freestanding cupboard.

A second staircase leads down to ground level, descending beneath the dining table and through the top of a wardrobe, with the final steps also containing drawers.

The main bedroom and bathroom are located on this lower floor, either side of the entrance and stairs.

With a slanted roof at one end, the top storey has spare room for an office and guest bedroom plus a small terrace.

Corrugated metal clads the outer walls of the house, which are each set back half a metre from the edge of the plot to comply with Japanese planning regulations for dense urban areas.

Tato Architects also designed public toilets that comprise a single curved wall sheltered beneath a gabled roof and converted a warehouse in Osaka into a house where residents can climb up the walls.

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Here’s the project description sent to us by the architects:

Widening interspace to utilise

Many of the requests to us for designing a house are accompanied with a prerequisite of ensuring a house for a nuclear family at an extremely subdivided lot, to which we cannot easily apply the manners of architecture having been accumulated for long time in Japan. We repeated trials and errors while designing as we think we are in the formative period for a new manner.

This time was not the exception as well. For this level of density of urban houses, where outer walls of the adjoining houses do not touch each other, the civil law demands 500 millimetres setbacks of outer walls to form interspace of 1000 millimetres in width in-between those.

We have kept thinking if it is used more effectively. In this project, we gave 400 millimetres more setbacks from the boundary line of the north eastern adjacent land. As a result, there was 1400 millimetres wide interspace as a passage, which was 900 millimetres in width from the border of the adjacent plot, utilised by placed an entrance in the middle of the side wall faced to the interspace, which realised to minimise space for routing in the house.

The setback ensured the eave as high as about nine metres avoiding the north side slant line. Non-structural walls were pushed out outward providing space for closets etc. Accordingly, it provided bigger space containing facilities such as a toilet than as it looked from interior space like furniture, which brought ambiguity in perception of space.

Architecture and furniture

When I have the honour of seeing an architect-designed house, I sometimes feel as if design furniture is telling messages. I wonder if it is right to summarise by saying “respect the original space and don’t bring any unnecessary things”, but it seems almost like a strong desire as much as to say not to fill the space with anything does not deserve it. Although I cannot say I don’t have such desire at all, I still aim to create space where a variety of things can be brought in and used in everyday life much more freely.

In this house, architectural elements such as stairs, a laundry space, closets, hand rails and toilets are made as if those are furniture. Except for those, there are only floors. As such, architecture and furniture are mingled and those meanings become relative each other, in which way I keep trying to create freedom in rooms as if all of those are just randomly placed and used by chance.

Like choreography notes

I always think the way of dealing with stairs is important in houses, especially in small ones. One of the general methods is to place a stair at the middle of one room allocating functions on both sides. Although it maximises usable area, it leaves the question if it brings rich spatial experience to live seeing every inch of the house and a stair all the time.

The ceiling of the dining room in this house is 3776 millimetres in height, which is determined to make the space under the staircase landing usable as routing. By making it extremely thin, the rest of the height was divided into 1880 millimetres downward and 1850 millimetres upward. Although those are tight dimensions, you can go through between two layers minding your head.

I think it is favourable for a house to have such a scale of physical bodies. Therefore, the dining table was placed over the stair between the ground floor and the first floor leaving space for residents to pass under it. Bodies appear and disappear under the table as residents go up and down the stair.

Once you slide the entrance door and slip into inside of furniture, you reach under the dining table, where faced to a big wall receiving sun light coming through the south window. You see the white wall softly lit from the north as you step on the small stool. To the second floor, you step on the sofa, furniture like a drawer, and the thin stair. At every steps toward upstairs, light conditions change as the direction and the size of space change. Stairs as choreography for spatial experience of this small, thin space.

Structure

As the site is located in the back of a narrow cul-de-sac and carrying-in by vehicle was limited, the structure with light materials such as 100 by 100 millimetres H steel sections for columns and beams, braces with round bars, 75-millimetre deck plates for the floor construction was applied. Those resulted in reducing the amount of steel materials, and the total construction cost to about as same as that of a wooden house.

The horizontal stiffness of floors was acquired with horizontal bracings of six-millimetre flat bars and 50-millimetre squared tie beams beneath concave parts of the deck plates. Floors on different levels were fixed to the columns at both ends so that the continuity of stiffness between those was still kept.

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Tato Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

The top floor rooms of this house in Japan by Tato Architects are contained inside sheds that sit on the roof (+ slideshow).

Located in a residential area in Hyogo Prefecture, the house was designed for a family with two children. “The residents requested that, as the area has short hours of sunlight in winter, they’d like to bring in as much light as possible,” architect Yo Shimada of Tato Architects told Dezeen.

To achieve this, the architect designed two of the rooftop sheds like greenhouses with translucent polycarbonate walls that let light through into the study room and bathroom contained inside, as well as down to the ground floor spaces below.

A layer of translucent insulation prevents the bathroom walls becoming too transparent. “There is no problem because they are not clear enough to expose more than the silhouettes,” explained Shimada.

The third shed has opaque walls to create more privacy for a guest bedroom.

Ladders and a staircase connect the upstairs rooms with the living room and kitchen on the lower floor, which is slightly sunken into the site.

This reduces the height of the building and also brings the rooftop courtyard closer to the ground. “It was expected that the whole site could be used like a garden,” said the architect.

Two bedrooms are also located on the ground floor and were designed with wooden walls so that they would look like storage crates.

Other recent projects by Tato Architects include a house with stairs in its lightwell and a house that comprises a metal barn on top of a glass box.

See all our stories about Tato Architects or see more Japanese houses on Dezeen.

Here’s some more information from Yo Shimada:

Looking for the stable climate in the room

This is a house in the northern part of Hyogo Prefecture for a couple and their two children. The construction site is a part of a place surrounded by mountains and the sky is overcast most of the days.

I wanted to create light, stable indoor climate and came up with a plan of three sheds of house type arranged on a 1.8 m high, grey foundation platform.

The level of the first floor was lowered by 760 mm below the ground to get firm basement, as the site was slant before the development, and to get more stable performance of the floor heating system of foundation heat condensing type utilizing the terrestrial heat.

It was also expected that the whole site could be used like a garden as the rooftop neared the ground thereby.

The site is at the corner entering the residential area and I thought that lowering the rooftop would leave wide visibility to the surroundings of the mountains and the sky, and that it would be beneficial to the whole residential area.

Overhead courtyard

On the foundation platform I arranged three – for a bathroom, for a sunroom and for a guestroom.

The bathroom shed and the sunroom shed provide lighting and ventilation for the lower floor. They form a overhead courtyard in a sense. Especially the sunroom collects heat in winter, and exhausts heat in summer by the breeze through the five motor-operated windows.

The three sheds do not actually provide spaces for usual staying but cover the living floor on the foundation platform.

This resulted in keeping away from neighboring eyes and keeping in touch with eyes of children playing in the garden or nearby.

Accordingly, I think, both delicate closeness and distance to the surroundings have been realized.

The residential area including the site was developed in recent years and is the front for the fields to change further to building lots. It was anticipated that brand-new commercialization houses would be built one after another.

By constructing a house looking as small as a peasant’s work shed of such material as vernacular as corrugated panels in an agricultural area I expected for this house to be a tie for the prospective rows of such new houses and the rural landscape still existing.

For free behavior of things

Some box-shape volumes, such as storages and a lavatory were required in the house, and they were made to resemble boxes for packing. Through studying the method of fixing the balustrade onto the rooftop without damaging the waterproofing membrane benches were mingled with the balustrade.

A washstand is fixed to the stairwell serving as handrail as well. The sunroom is a greenhouse itself, where various elements are misused as reference elements. Construction elements, such as handrails and top lights, are mingled together with conventional things for dual serving.

The reason for such elaboration is that I wanted to give the indoor scenery a kind of freedom using everything happened to be there as bricolage. Various things the residents carry in are expected to behave freely.

About material

Corrugated polycarbonate panels are used for outer walls of bathroom shed and sunroom shed among the three sheds to take in solar radiation. Moisture and water absorbing and heat-retaining sheets of greenhouse use are inserted in between the corrugated panels and structure.

The inside of the walls are formed with heat insulating layer of polycarbonate clear hollow sheet. The ceiling and walls of bathroom are further filled up with light transmitting thermal insulation material of reproduced PET bottles.

To bring the second floor close to the first floor 50 mm square pipes are laid around the opening connecting both floors. They are sandwiched by the flooring material and the ceiling material to come up to 80 mm thickness. This opening is to be closed with a shade during extremely hot hours in summer and extremely cold nights in winter.

The outer walls of a foundation platform are covered with fiber reinforced cement board leaving space a little to make rainwater drops easily off the edges and also to provide shading. The RC part is provided with external heat insulation and broken cobblestones are laid all around it for drainage of rainwater and heat insulation.

Project name: House in Yamasaki
Location of site: Hyogo, Japan
Site area: 231.72m2
Building area: 93.68m2
Total floor area: 119.11m2
Type of Construction: Wooden
Program: house
Project by: Tato architects
Principal designer: Yo Shimada
Design period: Oct.2010 -Aug. 2011
Construction period: Oct.2011 – Feb.2012

Above: ground floor – click above for larger image

Above: first floor – click above for larger image

Above: long section – click above for larger image

Above: cross-section – click above for larger image

Above: north elevation – click above for larger image

Above: east elevation – click above for larger image

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by Tato Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

This hilltop house by Japanese studio Tato Architects comprises a metal barn on top of a glass box (+ slideshow).

Located between a mountainous district and the harbour-side town of Kobe in southern Japan, the two-storey House in Rokko contains a kitchen and dining room inside its transparent ground-level storey.

A balcony surrounds the gabled first floor, creating an overhang that shades the glazed facade below.

Upstairs, the bathroom is separated by a transparent glass partition.

During construction, the foundations had to be dug by hand as no machines were able to climb the steep terrain to reach the site, while the streel structure had to be pieced together from sections small enough to be carried up one by one.

We’ve featured a few houses in Japan with glazed bathrooms, including one with a garden behind its walls and one with a whole room dedicated to plants.

See more Japanese houses on Dezeen »

Here’s a project description from Tato Architects:

House in Rokko

Looking for the way an architecture does not fix the affect to the environment too much I have been somewhat anxious about what an architecture in a place commanding a fine view should be. It is the state of affairs freezing affect towards the environment. What is the way, while enjoying the view, not to be dominant to the environment?

At an end of the residential area developed in the past halfway up Mt. Rokko the site was broad but too steep to bring in heavy machines for driving piles. A plane of 3.5 m by 13.5 m was left when a sufficient distance was secured, for manual digging for foundation, from the old breast wall and heaped soil.

The site was not necessitating much anxiety about people’s eyes. As people’s eyes from below would not reach the first floor, the first floor was walled with glass all around so that the fine view could be commanded to full extent, which was equipped with kitchen and visitor’s toilet.

The first floor, while functioning as what is called LDK, was assumed to be used for such varieties of activities out of daily life as treating guests, creating music with friends, or taking care of his bicycles.

A bedroom, storing facilities, facilities using water were arranged on the second floor, which was leveled high with a roof of conventional appearance to join in the existing rows of old houses. The high- leveled second floor was walled around with wide openings distributed equally for the ease of natural ventilation.

Thermal storage system using midnight electricity was laid into slab concrete and on the second floor far-infrared radiation film floor heating system was supplemented. And in summer it is expected that balcony and eaves will block the sunlight and breeze from Mt. Rokko will carry indoor heat through.

Steel-frame construction was adopted complying with the client’s wishes. As physical labor was obliged, small 100 mm by 100 mm H-section steel was selected and each construction material was limited to weigh about 100 kg for carrying up to the site.

Steel plate of 4.5 mm thick was laid for the cantilever balcony all around to make up for the loss of level structural plane caused by a large cutout of the second floor for stairway.

Observing the environment carefully without responding downright resulted in this house of hollow bare mortar floor ceilinged high and walled around with glass.

I feel I have found a way to cope, on an equal footing, with the environment peculiar to this scenic site where the environment, the architecture and the resident’s various things of various styles and ages are mingling with each other.

Project name: House in Rokko
Location of site: Kobe Japan

Site area: 295.31m2
Building area: 56.00m2

Total floor area: 94.50m2
Type of Construction: Steel
Program: house & atelier

Project by: Tato architects
Principal designer: Yo shimada

Design period: Jan. 2010 – Mar. 2011
Construction period: Aug. 2011 – Nov. 2011

Wooden steps lead to an attic with irregular sloping walls in this residence for an artist in Shiga, Japan, by Japanese studio Tato Architects.

The wood-panelled attic space is connected to the main residence of House in Hiedaira by apertures in the leaning surfaces, which look down into the main living space below.

A separate workshop building for the client’s work sits adjacent and slightly forward from the house, taking the same gabled form.

The two-storey wooden structure is clad completely in corrugated polycarbonate panels.

Photographs are by Satoshi Shigeta unless otherwise stated.

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The following information is from the architects:

The residence is located at the foot of Mt. Hiei near the border of Kyoto and Shiga.

Above photograph is by Tato Architects

The client is an artist, who needed an atelier and a home for his family, as well as a place for his parents whom he wishes to live together in the future.

With a regulation that mandates sloped roofs, the site is surrounded by gable-roofed houses which seem to provide a sense of calmness in the neighborhood.

Above photograph is by Tato Architects

Accordingly, we developed a plan that fits to the surrounding environment of this hillside residential area. The site was not large enough to accommodate all the needs of the client.  In addition, we were informed that an atelier may cause noise and odor.

Above photograph is by Tato Architects

Taking these constraints into consideration, we developed a plan in which three independent cottage-style houses–an atelier and two mini houses (one for the client’s family and the other for his parents)–are arranged in such a way to share the watering and drainage area.

The construction of the atelier was simplified to meet the low-budget limitation.

Above photograph is by Tato Architects

Cement excelsior boards, serving as fire-resistant thermal insulators and bearing wall structures, were attached to the structure, which were then covered with corrugated polycarbonate plates.

Thermal storage using night time electricity is buried under the ground to provide underfloor heat through the foundation. Bare concrete is used as the finished floor.

Likewise, walls and roofs is bare structural materials, which makes it allows the artist/client himself to renovate the building according to the clientÅfs changing needs.

Above photograph is by Tato Architects

The large opening is created on the north side of the building to provide natural sunlightillumination. In addition, cement excelsior board can be removed to receive sunlight from various parts of the walls.

Above photograph is by Yousuke Takeda

The size and arrangement of windows of the two dwelling houses are scaled to follow the proportion of conventional cottage style, which has an effect of making the houses look smaller than they actually are.

The ground level floors of these houses are simply finished with mortar in order to efficiently transmit the heat from the thermal storage system under the foundation.

Above photograph is by Yousuke Takeda

Lauan plywood is used for the interior walls, part of which are painted white by the client himself. The second floor does not need huge room, but needs sufficient space.

If a vertical wall is built, the wall divides the second floor to a very small room and void area. Therefore, instead of a vertical wall, a wall is built to give required space to the rooms.

Above photographs is by Tato Architects

The lean wall becomes roof-like-ceiling as well as hill-like-floor dividing the second floor space.

The lean wall also looks like a cottage accommodating another small cottage inside. Normally, a cottage is regarded that inside and outside is the same.

In this case, the cottage is not very simple accommodating another cottage inside like crystal.

Project information

Project name: House in hieidaira
Location: Shiga Japan
Site area: 490.00m2

Building area: 116.01m2
Total floor area: 186.14m2
Type of Construction: Wooden

Designed by Yo Shimada.
Design period : Apr. 2008 – Dec. 2009
Construction period : Dec. 2009 – Apr. 2010

See also:

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