Modern Desert Homes: Japanese Homes

Showing posts with label Japanese Homes. Show all posts

New Kyoto Town House / Alphaville Architects

Faceted wooden panels divide the interior of this house in Kyoto, Japan, by architects ALPHAville.

The steel structure allows for an open interior where all floors are visually linked.

Photographs are by Kei Sugino and K Takeguchi.

The information that follows is from the architects:

New Kyoto Town House

The most characteristic feature of this house is the polyhedral form of the partition walls. They are not made by intuition but are based on logical concepts and perform multiple functions.

First, the partition walls, normally extended in the vertical and horizontal directions, have multidimensionality and loosely connect the rooms on the three floors.

The space thus created is one continuous room with dynamic nuances: it is simultaneously spacious and heterogeneous.

Second, the partition walls serve as reflectors of natural light.

They softly reflect the natural light coming from both the north and south sides and bring it to the otherwise dark interior of the building.

Finally, the partition walls blur the boundary between architecture and furniture, thus stimulating perception and behaviour.

Melt into floors and ceilings, the plywood-finished walls offer enjoyable experiences of touching and passing.

The house as a whole is a machine for living, like playground equipment.

Influence in Asia

Because of the landscape regulations and the physical context of the neighbourhood, we inherited the traditional form and composition of townhouses. But at the same time, this house overcome the negative aspects of townhouses.

The wooden structure of townhouses cannot afford to have large openings on the short sides of the building as well as on floors. Consequently, the interior is dark and communications of people are limited to the horizontal direction.

In this project, it is the steel rigid frame and the polyhedral partition walls that enable to overcome the drawbacks of typical townhouses. Large openings on the walls and the floors, along with the partitions, allow natural light to diffuse multidirectionally, and encourage three dimensional communications and movements.

Freed from the constraints of the old system, occupants can have various relations with each other and place, and a new lifestyle in the historical area of Kyoto emerges.

You have read this article Architecture / Dezeen / Homes / Japanese Homes with the title Japanese Homes. You can bookmark this page URL https://moderndeserthomes.blogspot.com/2012/10/new-kyoto-town-house-alphaville.html. Thanks!

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:

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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 Japanese Homes. 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.