Hasta La Ideas

The protruding entrance lobby of this Tokyo house has a seamless frosted facade that glows with diffused light.

Top and above: photograph is by Satoshi Shigeta

Named Cube Court House, the three-storey residence by Japanese architects Shinichi Ogawa & Associates encloses a central courtyard and tree.

Above: photograph is by Satoshi Shigeta

A large double-height room occupies the majority of the ground floor, accommodating a kitchen, lounge and dining area.

Two-storey-high glass walls on both sides of the courtyard permit views across from this living room towards bedrooms on the ground and first floors.

A glazed sunroof is the only room on the top floor and opens out onto a terrace overlooking the courtyard below.

You can also see more projects by the same architects here, including a long narrow house divided lengthways.

Photography is by SOA, apart from where otherwise stated.

Above: photograph is by Satoshi Shigeta

Here’s some more text from Shinichi Ogawa & Associates:

Cube Court House (S Residence)

Within a calm residential area in Tokyo, this house has the two contrasting faces: an intimate, introverted, closed house with courtyard and an outward looking, open glasshouse above.

A tall wall of frosted glass on the principal façade brings sunlight into the entrance hall, through which the LDK room is accessed.

The large courtyard is bounded on the North by the LDK and on the opposite side the children’s room and master bedroom.

The small courtyard is placed for the bathroom and the toilets, interrupting the eyes. Totally closed toward the neighborhood, the cubic courtyard connects these modestly sized rooms indirectly, creating a sense of togetherness, while providing a comfortable, spacious living environment; well ventilated, filled with sunlight and connected to the changing seasons.

In contrast, the 3rd floor glazed penthouse and a roof top terrace are perfectly opened towards the city.

Project name: CUBE COURT HOUSE
Completion: 2010
Location: Tokyo, Japan

Program: residence
Structural system: reinforced concrete, steel frame

Site area: 177.72 sqm
Building area: 88.75 sqm
Total floor space: 154.60 sqm

Japanese architect Masayoshi Takahashi of High Land Design has completed a house in Tokyo with a squared spiral staircase at its centre.

Constructed from concrete beside a main road, the three-storey House in Aoto has a black-painted facade that screens a terrace on the rooftop.

Rectangular windows pierce the exterior in a seemingly random arrangement to let light filter into workrooms on the ground floor, living rooms on the first floor and three bedrooms on the top floor.

Softwood boards cover the floors of each room as well as the risers and treads of the faceted staircase, while walls and ceilings are painted white throughout.

Other Japanese houses with focal staircases include one behind slanted walls and peepholes, plus another that spirals around a wall.

Photography is by Toshiyuki Yano.

Here’s some more text from Masayoshi Takahashi:

This house is located in a heavily trafficked road on the north side.

We thought that is important to be connected the scene of life continuously while moved up and down about this project.

We placed each space like spiral around the stairs. So that it is possible to move around each space without feeling the difficulty moving up and down.

The first floor is garage and work spaces, the second floor is a living and dining space on sunny south side, the third floor is a private room and master bedroom.

And we have placed closed spaces (such as toilet ,storage, sanitary) on the north side. So we were able to get a quiet and sunny living environment.

Location: Katsushika Tokyo
Architects: Masayoshi Takahashi/High Land Design
Structural engineers: A.S.Associates

Structure: Reinforced concrete
Frame: 3stories+Roof Teracce

Site area: 78.81m2
Built area: 50.21m2

Total floor area: 144.50m2
Completion date:2011.12

Translucent windows create a glowing frame around the facade of this Tokyo townhouse when the lights are turned on inside.

Designed by Japanese studio Yoritaka Hayashi Architects, House in Nakameguro has four storeys but is the same height as surrounding three storey residences.

Plywood lines the interior walls of the two middle floors, which include a first-floor living room and kitchen plus two second-floor bedrooms.

Built-in plywood furniture is arranged around the edges of rooms on these floors to create flexible open spaces.

A white porcelain-tiled bathroom is located on the top floor and leads out onto a rooftop balcony.

Our readers all seem to love houses in Japan – see more of them here.

Photography is by Takumi Ota.

Here’s some more explanation from Yoritaka Hayashi:

House in Nakameguro / Yoritaka Hayashi Architects

This is a small house standing in a small site in centre of the city.

Most newly-built houses around the site are being converted to three storey buildings.

Planning four storeys with the same volume of three storey buildings allows different perspective which enables this house to have an open interior space.

As a consequence, this building has a annular openings which appears as an abstract and continuous ribbon of light in the interior space. This ribbon erases the edge of the interior space, and makes the outline of the space obscure.

Thus the space has a stretch from the inside to outside.

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Besides, the furniture arranged on the facade side is opposite to the usual arrangement and is treated as an extension of the building, giving the space suitable scale and enabling us to use the space effectively.

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Year: December of 2010
Collaborators: Akira Suzuki / ASA (Structural Engineer) , Takasou Takahashi / SESSE-Design (Façade Consultant)

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Area: Meguro, Tokyo, Japan
Site area: 40.01 m2

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Building area: 32.17 m2
Total floor area: 99.80 m2
Structure: steel frame

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A curving chasm slices off the corner of this showroom building in western Tokyo to create a passageway to its entrance.

Completed by Japanese architects Tsutomu Hasegawa of Be-Fun Design and Takato Tamagami in 2008, the five-storey-high concrete block contains galleries and a workplace for textile company Sunwell.

Glass bridges cross the narrow, timber-lined alleyway on the three upper levels, leading to small triangular meeting rooms.

On the ground floor, a staircase leads down to a basement with high ceilings, where the company host events.

This is the second product showroom we’ve featured on Dezeen this month – see our recent story about a timber showroom concealed behind gauzy black curtains.

Photography is by Masaya Yoshimura.

Here’s some more text from Takato Tamagami:

Sunwell Muse Kita-sando

This is a building of a textile planning and trading company which handles the entire process from the production to retail.

The site is well located on the corner plot near the fashionable city “Harajuku”.

The client had been focusing on female apparel business, so the concept of our building design which is a metaphor of female beauty was suitable for them to put across their corporate identity.

The components that characterises this architecture are the two curved surface walls which dominate the entire space.

These two walls form a shortcut path which connects the roads in front of each side of the corner plot.

This path which looks like a narrow alley or the bottom of a ravine leads visitors inside the building, to the event hall in the basement and the showrooms on the first and second floors.

The curves used in the elevation surfaces on the north side and the east side represent those of a female body.

The graceful curved surface walls were created by connecting the curves with a straight line.

These curved walls are used as a motif of this architecture, and you can see them not only in the façade but also in the internal spaces on each floor.

Use: show room, event hall, office
Client: Sunwell Group

Architect: Takatotamagami Architectural Design/Takato Tamagami + Be-Fun Design/Tsutomu Hasegawa
Location: Sendagaya, Shibuya-Ku, Tokyo, Japan

Date of completion: 29th, February, 2008
Structure: reinforced concrete structure + steel structure

Exterior wall materials: custom-made stucco/ timber pine natural resin varnish finish
Roof materials: seat waterproofing

Interior wall materials: concrete finish/ timber pine natural resin varnish finish / plasterboard EP
Interior floor materials: calcium silicate board/ cement plastering

Building area: 221m2
Total floor area: 992m2

Japanese architect Hiroyuki Tanaka added diagonal walls and blue lights to this Tokyo apartment.

The central cross-shaped partition creates views between the three main rooms, which comprise a bedroom, a living room and an entrance lobby.

There are softwood floors and furniture in each room and all walls are painted white.

After dark, the blue-filtered lights in the living room cause the bright white lights of the city outside to appear orange to the eye.

We’ve featured a few projects by Hiroyuki Tanaka on Dezeen, including a table with the structure of an ancient temple – see them all here.

Photography is by Shimizu Ken.

Here are a few words from Tanaka:

High-rise residence

We often look out over cityscapes from high places or out onto the scenery outside from planes. If we had the chance to build in one of these high places we would create a space that fully exploits the view.

The plan (improving high-rise residences)

(STEP 1) 
Space always needs to be divided into rooms when we consider living requirements. However, if you divide the rooms in a plan such that the opening is shared and becomes a family view then the view becomes a family treasure. This in turn makes the view become dynamic by having as large an opening as possible.
How can we create this?

(STEP 2) 
Walls are normally placed perpendicular or parallel to the outer wall of a building but doing so divides up the broad opening. So, we tried revolving this neat cross-shape plan.

(STEP 3) 
We moved the angle of the cross to create a plan where the sides are open to avoid making walls on the two open sides.

Lighting: We wanted to keep the special view to look out on and also keep the night view unique. Couples often have drinks together after dinner so we wondered if we could create a relaxed space like a hotel bar. For this, we tried planning lighting that made internal room lighting minimal and made the most of the nightscape outside borrowing the Tokyo nightscape made up of, perhaps wasteful, amounts of light without using electricity ourselves.

How about sharing both the view and the light? However, the Tokyo nightscape we were using is whitish compared to Western cities, due to the light sources. Having a thick blue light cascade down from the ceiling in the living room is our way of visually fixing the whitish light sources. Due to the correcting effects of human vision, when the expected white balance in the room leans towards blue, the whitish light from the Tokyo nightscape will appear orange within a few minutes. This is because the eye recognises the inside of the room, turned blue, as its white balance and mistakes the light coming from outside the room as closer to the complementary color of blue, orange (the room is turned to an orange color beforehand).

So, with this intriguing tuning feature of human sight and this phenomenon of opening up, the couple sees the world through new eyes.

Project name: high-rise residence
Architect: Hiroyuki Tanaka Architects
Project leader: Hiroyuki Tanaka
Project Team: Tatsuya Furukawa Hiroki Hanazuka

Lighting Design: Mayumi Kondo (Luxie)
Construction management:TANK
Date: study Feb 2011 – June 2011, construction July 2011- Oct 2011
Area: 74sqm
Location: Tokyo, Japan