Hasta La Ideas

Japanese studio UID Architects often place gardens inside buildings and this house in Fukuyama is no exception (+ slideshow).

The two-storey family house is nestled amongst an assortment of high-rise buildings, which “shut out the sunlight” according to architect Keisuke Maeda.

Instead of adding windows to the facade, Maeda specified a series of skylights and clerestory windows to bring daylight in from above to the living room, kitchen and children’s room on the top floor.

The indoor garden occupies a double-height space at the centre of the residence and also acts as a lightwell for the entrance lobby at the front of the ground floor.

A grid of bookshelves provides a balustrade around the edge of the courtyard, which is also the location of a wooden staircase connecting the two floors.

Maeda explains how a traditional Japanese townhouse occupied the site previously and also had a garden at its centre, which he believes creates a connection between “past and present”.

This is the third project we’ve recently featured by UID Architects, following a house with sunken rooms and a renovated townhouse.

Other projects by the studio include a timber house at the foot of a mountain and a residence comprising four cedar-clad blocks.

See more Japanese houses on Dezeen »

Photography is by Hiroshi Ueda.

Here’s some information from UID Architects:

Renewal of a form / lasting sense of scale

This is a reconstruction of a house in the centre of the city. The site has 5 meters for lateral directions, and 18 meters for longitudinal one.

This is a north‐south site formed like machiya. The family is consisted of two children and their parents.

The feature of this site is surrounded by buildings on east and west side, and faced on the south road; there is a 30-meter-high car park building. This shuts out the sunlight.

Since the site has many conditions, we thought that it would be comfortable space that we can feel basic elements such as sunlight and wind, and that we succeed to a form which nagaya have had.

As regards to the plan, we put every rooms along with the inner garden that contains the element coathouse has.

Thanks to the shape of the section like 凸, every room that run from north to south can get homogeneous sunlight and wind.

The element of the exterior of a building from inner garden make a room give space like exterior, and depth, so we can feel a vague condition.

Cut-through axonometric – click above for larger image.

The house takes in building-wind possibly from first floor, and go by through the inner garden.

Ground floor plan – click above for larger image.

Which the leaves are trembling in the breeze, visualize wind, sound and sunlight. That helps making a space as if we were in the forest despite in the city.

First floor plan – click above for larger image.

Thanks to the hanging wall run from west to east and ceiling height, every rooms is connected as one room providing each territory, and frame construction, the house takes in many elements of exterior from free section.

Section – click above for larger image.

As we renewed the garden of nagaya that built before, as we make people be aware of the sense of scale that nagaya has. We thought that will be only point that can connect past to present.

Section – click above for larger image.

Location: Fukuyama, Hiroshima, Japan
Name project: Town-House
Architects: UID – Keisuke Maeda
Structural consultants: Konishi Structural Engineers – Yasutaka Konishi, Takeshi Kaneko,
Landscape consultants: Toshiya Ogino Environment Design Office – Toshiya Ogino
General contractor: Yamato Co.Ltd – Monden Umayahara
Structural system: steel construction
Site area: 95.41 sq m
Built area: 75.56 sq m
Total floor area: 138.23 sq m
Date of completion: March 2011

The post Machi House by
UID Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Circular hollows create sunken rooms and curved balconies inside this wooden house in Japan by UID Architects (+ slideshow).

The residence is named Pit House, in reference to the six excavated spaces that provide circular living rooms inside the building and terraces in the garden.

“Since the clients lived in the upper storey of a company residence before, they demanded to connect with the earth,” explained architect Keisuke Maeda. “The concept is inevitably drawn from the request of the clients, and the context of the site. It becomes a subterranean room with little influence of the open air, and a relationship with the external surface of the earth.”

A cedar box encases the house and is propped up on stick-like legs so that it appears to hover above the sunken ground floor.

A large rectangular opening reveals a recessed balcony behind the facade, which branches out from an L-shaped first floor.

Circular holes in this upper floor line up with the shapes of the rooms below, creating a curved balcony around the edge of the two bedrooms.

A concrete cylinder stretches up from the lower floor to the roof, enclosing a circular bathroom and a storage closet, while a staircase spirals around its perimeter.

Other projects we’ve featured by UID Architects include a timber house at the foot of a mountain and a residence comprising four cedar-clad blocks.

See more Japanese houses on Dezeen »

Photography is by Koji Fujii/Nacása & Partners.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

The house positions itself in Okayama Prefecture near Seto Inland Sea. The site is located on a terraced mountain hill that was developed as a residential land. The family is consisted of a married couple and a child. We considered a new way of architecture on the site condition, where views are open towards the north and the ground level is one meter higher than the road level.

The relationship is as if the site’s natural environment and the architecture coexist at the same time. The architecture has become a part of the whole landscape of undivided environment, not simply thinking about connection to the surroundings from the cut off opening in walls.

This time, we came up with a living form that accepts the outside environment such as surface of the terraced land, surrounding neighboring houses’ fences and walls, residences that sit along the slope and far beyond mountains. The architectural principle is not a division from the land with a wall, but an interior that is an extension of the outside and connection of the surface like a pit dwelling that is undivided from the land.

In concrete, six types of floor levels including a round floor that is created by digging the surface are connected with a concrete cylinder core at the center. Furthermore, delicate and multiple branch-like columns that support the slightly floating boxes produce various one-room spaces.

Environment and architecture create new extensive relationship by connecting surfaces. The territory is undefined in the space in a body sense. I think that is more natural relationship of an architecture standing in a landscape

Name project: Pit house
Architects: UID – Keisuke Maeda

Exploded axonometric – click above for larger image

Consultants:
Stuctural engineers: Konishi Structural Engineers – Yasutaka Konishi, Takeshi Kaneko, structural;
Environmental: Toshiya Ogino Environment Design Office – Toshiya Ogino
General contractor: Nakamura Construction Co.Ltd. – Hiromi Nakamura,Yasunobu Hida, Keizou Yoshioka, Kazuhiko Kiminami

Ground floor plan – click above for larger image and key

Materials:
Structural system: steel structure
Exterior: ceder plate, wood protection paint,
Interior: structual plywood, exposed concrete, wood protection paint, cherry flooring

First floor plan – click above for larger image and key

Site area: 232.12 sq m
Built area: 115.32 sq m
Total floor area: 116.66 sq m
Date of completion: October 2011

Section – click above for larger image and key

The post Pit House by
UID Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Japanese studio UID Architects have completed this timber house at the foot of a mountain in Japan that has wide openings in the walls and roof, as well as between the ground and first floors.

The entrance to Nest is located on the ground floor and visitors pass through a planted garden that can grow up through the full height of the house.

More Japanese Houses on Dezeen »

Photographs by H. Ueda.

The following is from UID Architects:

Nest by UID Architects
Onomichi-city, Hiroshima, Japan

This is a small house planned in a forest surrounded by rich nature. The site is located in the foot of a mountain with scarce neighbouring houses in Onomichi City. The family is consisted of two daughters, their mother and their loving cat.

Since there are only three women, we thought it would be appropriate to gently connect a boundary of the place’s environment and architecture, allowing close distance between the family members. It is to seize the environment as non-dividable, similar to creatures that generate their nest under elements that cover forest’s ground. It is like a principle that expands from a nest in a forest, to a forest , then to the earth, and ultimately to the universe.

This time we sought a single space that comprehends the surroundings and the house by rethinking elements such as floors and walls that make up architecture. Specifically, in the ground layer some spaces are connected to each other by a tunnel that becomes a concrete anthill nest attached with a small entrance on the ground.

Above the ground a floating wooden nest box composed of things like branches and fallen leaves cover the nest on the ground’s surface. Although non-sequence composition of the floors and the walls make the architectural elements look separated, they will become essentials that link architecture and the surrounding in succession, when viewing the environment on the whole.

The house will offer spaces that is similar to the forest’s comfortable sunshine and shade, which reside with natural climate. The house will be a nest in a forest that its territory will not be regulated.

Project description
Name project: Nest
Architects: UID architects – Keisuke Maeda and Toru Shigehiro
Consultants: Konishi
Structural Engineers: Yasutaka Konishi, Takeshi Kaneko
Structural: K-style – Kouso Katayama
Mechanical: Toshiya Ogino
Environment Design Office: Toshiya Ogino
Masaru Kitamura, landscape
General contractor: Home Co., Ltd.－Masafumi Ichikawa and Akihiro Hosoya

Structural system: reinforced concrete, timber
Used materials: cedar, exterior; concrete, structural plywood, interior
Site area: 362.00㎡
Built area:81.22㎡
Total floor area : 121.45㎡
Date of completion: November, 2010

Click above for larger image

Click above for larger image

See also:

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