House in Nagoya by Suppose Design Office

Japanese architects Suppose Design Office have completed a residence in Nagoya, Japan, featuring a room dedicated to plants. Update: this project is included in Dezeen Book of Ideas, which is on sale now for £12.

The house, situated on a narrow plot surrounded by neighbouring houses, accommodates the client’s desire for a vibrant garden by including a landscaped “garden room” bordering the main living space.

The architects aimed to treat the rooms and garden in the same way.

Objects associated with interiors, such as paintings, appear in the garden areas while rock and flowerbeds overlap into the living spaces.

The designers hope that the constantly changing internal gardens will continually alter the appearance of the home.

See our series of stories about Suppose Design Office:

House in Saijo

House in Jigozen

House in Sakuragawa

House in Kamakura

Here’s some text from Suppose:

–

House in Nagoya

This Nagoya home features rooms designed for plants.

This home is built on a small, narrow plot surrounded by other houses, making the location less than ideal.

Responding to the client’s desire to have a vibrant garden we suggested a design featuring a room for plants, a “garden room” in other words.

Essentially, in this home the garden, which usually exists in the so-called exterior, is incorporated into the interior as landscaping to surround the tenant’s living space.

It was our intention to treat rooms and gardens as equivalent, and make the relationship between inside and out closer, by creating a design featuring this garden-like room so that things normally decorating a room such as art, books, and furnishings would in a way almost be thrust into an exterior space.

Rather than a design that begins to grow stale as soon as it is completed, through this design featuring the constantly changing and vibrant “garden room” we hope that the tenants daily lives will be richer than before.

Using this design as a starting point, we hope that words such as garden and landscape that had only been used for exteriors can begin to take on new and varied meanings, bringing vibrant and beautiful scenery into the interior of homes as well, and make architectural aesthetics more and more diverse.

You have read this article Architecture / Featured / Homes / Japan / Japanese Homes with the title Japan. You can bookmark this page URL https://moderndeserthomes.blogspot.com/2012/06/house-in-nagoya-by-suppose-design-office.html. Thanks!

House in Kyobate by Naoko Horibe

This family house by architect Naoko Horibe features a traditional Japanese-style room with tatami mats inside a protruding, timber-clad mezzanine.

The washitsu (Japanese-style room) is a common feature in modern Japanese houses but in this h0use, rather than linking to the yōshitsu (Western-style rooms) via sliding shōji screens, it features internal windows offering views of the living areas below and children’s bedrooms above.

Externally, the projecting tatami rood is clad in timber. The house is in Kyobate, a suburb in Nara Prefecture close to Osaka.

Washitsu have featured in a few buildings we’ve published on Dezeen, includinga tea house on stilts and a house with three layers of walls and ceilings.

Photography is by Eiji Tomita.

Here’s some extra details from Naoko Horibe:

House in Kyobate

This home for a family with young children centers around a Japanese-style mezzanine with tatami flooring.

Extending out into the first floor living/dining/kitchen area, and with a view of both that room and the second floor children’s rooms, the mezzanine serves to link the various spaces within the home.

It also accents the building’s exterior, pushing out beyond the rest of the facade.

From the central mezzanine to the linked children’s rooms and the living/dining/kitchen area with its vertical void, this home offers a diversity of living spaces that come together to provide a fun and stimulating environment for the residents.

Design to completion: March 2011-August 2011

Location: Nara-Shi, NARA

Primary usage: Residence

Structure: wooden construction, two stories above ground

Family structure: Couple with two children

Site area: 165.34 m2

Building area: 52.17 m2

Total floor space: 93.58 m2

Architect: Naoko Horibe

First floor:

1. Entrance

2. shoe closet

3. Living room & Dining room

4. Kitchen

5. Lavatory

6. Washroom

7. Bathroom

8. Drying place

9. Parking space

Second floor

10. Tatami room

11. Child’s bedroom

12. Master bedroom

You have read this article Architecture / Featured / Homes / Japan / Japanese Homes with the title Japan. You can bookmark this page URL https://moderndeserthomes.blogspot.com/2012/06/house-in-kyobate-by-naoko-horibe.html. Thanks!

Kanayama Community Center / Kengo Kuma & Associates

© Takeshi Yamagishi

Architects: Kengo Kuma & Associates
Location: Ota City, Gunma, Japan
Title of the Project: Museum of Kanayama Castle Ruin, Kanayama Community Center
Client: City of Ota, Gunma Prefecture
Site Area: 3318.69 sqm
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Takeshi Yamagishi






© Takeshi Yamagishi

The site is located at the foot of Kanayama Castle, known for its beautiful stone wall and stone pavement. It is a community center incorporating guidance facilities for this historic place and a workshop for local residents to learn handicraft and dyeing. The site is divided at near the center by a 6m difference in levels. Bearing this physical feature in mind, it was designed to form a lane loosely connecting the two facilities, taking in a sense of distance towards its rich surrounding nature. Technically, volume of the two-story community center is replaced by a breast wall, and is connected on the 2nd level to the guidance facility via ‘community square’ on the 2nd floor, thus providing a circulative layout. The entire architecture therefore is the breast wall.


© Takeshi Yamagishi

The exterior wall is a thin and light screen, a transformation of the ‘stone wall’ that characterizes the historic spot. Stone is fit in the steel plate supporting the load of the entrance porch, so that a feel of calmness and strength can be added to the semi open-air space. There are two types of shapes in the stone, determined by the weight that can be carried by one person, and they are developed in a regular pattern to gain a sense of lightness, seeking a symbol born from the pattern. For the ceiling of the interior also, cement excelsior board and rectangular panel were layered in top and bottom and plastered in a pattern, giving varied degrees so that its fractionalization and spatial gaps would develop in three-dimension. It is an attempt to link the material and the space by patterns.

 

[Source]

You have read this article Architecture / Featured / Japan with the title Japan. You can bookmark this page URL https://moderndeserthomes.blogspot.com/2012/01/kanayama-community-center-kengo-kuma.html. Thanks!