Some of the concrete walls of this house in Yokohama, Japan, by Tai and Associates were formed against wooden planks, while some have been rendered white and others have been left plain (+ slideshow).
Japanese studio Tai and Associates designed the two-storey House in Shinoharadai for a hillside corner plot already owned by the family, creating separate floors for different generations and a small home office.
“A new program composed of a two-family residence and office is applied to the building, while paying attention to preserve the family’s history and memories attached to the land,” said the architects. Continue Reading…
This timber house in Kanagawa by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has a square plan with a teardrop-shaped courtyard at its centre (+ slideshow).
Shigeru Ban planned the single-storey Villa at Sengokubara with a radial arrangement, creating a sequence of rooms that each face inwards towards the central courtyard.
The roof of the house angles gently inward, creating a canopy around the perimeter of the courtyard, and it varies in height to create lower ceilings at the building’s entrance.
Timber columns and roof joists are exposed inside the building, and line the ceilings and rear walls of every room.
Spaced wooden slats form partitions and doorways between some rooms, allowing views between spaces.
A wooden staircase leads to a mezzanine level beneath the highest section of the room, which looks out over the main living and dining room.
Two study rooms are tucked away behind, while the kitchen and main bedrooms are positioned just beyond.
A sheltered terrace separates this side of the house from a guest suite containing two bedrooms and a bathroom.
Here’s a short description from the architects:
Sengokubara S Residence
The 2‐storey wood structure residence is situated on a flag pole shaped site, 30m square in plan with a 15m diameter interior courtyard.
With the main living room centred on the interior courtyard, all spaces are arranged in a radial manner from the entrance.
The eight sliding doors separating the main living room and interior courtyard can be opened at any time so that the space can be used as one.
The structure is made up of wooden columns and beams, which are 75mm x 350mm L‐shaped pieces, also arranged in a radial manner, creating a large one way sloped roof.
The large roof varies in height, achieving ceiling heights between 2.4m to 7.5m.
Location: Hakone, Kanagawa, Japan Architects: Shigeru Ban Architects Project Team: Shigeru Ban, Nobutaka Hiraga, Wataru Sakaki, Jun Matsumori Structural engineers: Hoshino Structural Engineering General contractors Hakone Construction Principal use: residence Site area: 1770.00m2 Building area: 576.89m2 Total floor area: 452.60m2 Structure: timber Number of storeys: 2
A kindergarten play area shaped like a mountain surrounded by clouds has been completed by Japanese firm Moriyuki Ochiai Architects (+ slideshow).
Part of Piccolino Kindergarten in the southern Japanese prefecture of Kanagawa, the space was created primarily for art education and as a multi-purpose room for concerts, performances, exhibitions and children’s workshops.
Children can explore by crawling over and around the brightly coloured wooden seats and through archways and small passages. When seats are pushed against the mountain they form steps, allowing children to clamber up the mountain shape through the clouds.
The seats are also light enough to be picked up and stacked on top of or next to each other, creating new heights and spaces in the room.
Architect Moriyuki Ochiai said he chose the triangular shapes because they were the most simple and suitable for children to use safely. “The size of the equipment is a unit on which two little children can be seated together so they feel close to each other and can naturally be friends,” Ochiai told Dezeen.
Ochiai also explained that the height difference between adults and children brings about different ways to perceive and enjoy the environment. “A surface used as a counter by adults appears as a consecutive arch over houses to children,” he said.
“From a kid’s perspective, the mountain rises from the clouds changing gradually from white to brown, while adults looking down from the top of the mountain see clouds floating below,” he added.
Ochiai said he created the space to develop imagination, expression, communication and creativity skills for both adults and children. The renovated 90-square-metre floor space from an existing office building is in an area with lots of new housing projects where many families with young children live.
Slideshow: a wooden library climbs the walls of this four-storey house in Kanagawa, Japan.
Starting in the basement, the first set of bookshelves are a storey high, while a second set begin on the first floor and rise up to reach the ceiling of the floor above.
Tokyo studio Ryuji Fujimura Architects designed the residence, which is enclosed behind a grey powder-coated steel facade.
A mixture of both concrete and steel staircases connect the levels inside the house, while ladders provide access to a second floor loft and to the highest bookshelves.
Japanese architects Eureka and Atelier Chocolate have completed a vet’s surgery and apartment behind a metal mesh cage in Kanagawa.
The two-storey Veterinarian N House has a square-shaped plan and is angled away from the metal screen to create four triangular courtyards in the gaps between.
One of these courtyards accommodates the entrance to the ground-floor clinic, while the second is the entrance to the apartment above and the other two provide a service area and animal garden.
Oriented strand board lines the interior walls of the building, which has a timber-framed structure.
In the apartment upstairs, a living room, bedroom, guest room and balcony surround a cluster of utilities rooms that include a kitchen.
This is the first animal hospital we’ve ever featured on Dezeen, but you can see more stories about animals here, including chicken homes, bird cages and fish bowls.
Photography is by Ookura Hideki.
Here’s a little more text from Eureka:
Veterinarian N House Designed by Eureka + atelier CHOCOLATE
A two story building of an animal hospital and the veterinarian’s house.
We created several gardens around the building – garden for animals, backyard, garden for the dweller.
Since those gardens are narrow, we rotated the building and created trapezoidal gardens so that those gardens could be wider space.
The top/bottom edge of the metal screen at the site border changes in response to the surroundings and trims the view toward the outside of the site.
Japanese architects Masaki Mori of Morii’s Atelier and Shin Yokoo of OUVI have completed a house in Kanagawa, Japan, for a couple who plan to retire soon. (more…)
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