In between “before” and “after”
Dark concrete walls and a black archetypical house volume above it, a translucent lean-to roof, a white high flat roof and a silver box under it. Those totally different materials and colors are combined to form this house. The site is in a residential area developed around 1930, sloping to the west on a hillside of Mt. Ikoma, which overlooks the urban area of Osaka Plain. We observed favorably the mosaic pattern of old and rebuilt houses telling each history of over eighty years.
It was not easy to find out the way for making the house coordinated to the surroundings as the site was 3.5m up from the road so that the house would look larger than its actual size. We proceeded with the design by making places step by step searching an appropriate way of building the house that adapt to the surrounding environment.
First, we made concrete walls with rough texture by using a formwork made by small split lauan to match with old masonry walls and concrete-block walls in the surrounding environment, and covered those with a black archetypical house structure following the roof form of houses in the neighborhood. After that, living space was made in the way as if it was a renovation of interior space. The space for facilities to support the daily life such as a kitchen and a bathroom is placed in between the concrete walls and the cliff-retaining wall behind the house, covered with a translucent lean-to roof and wooden windows and doors. The Venetian window blinds help residents to avoid to be seen and control their privacy. On the road side, a thin, modern flat roof, which represents a new life style covers the box made of steel plates, commonly used for temporary enclosure at construction sites in Japan, pretending atmosphere of ongoing construction sites. The child’s room in between the box and the roof is dressed with a curtain designed by Akane Moriyama, which has depth and beautiful gradation of overlapped translucent colorful fabrics.
Eventually, the house obtains space that is related to both “before and “after”. Living places are placed in between where different time-axes meet, as “concrete walls” and “a black house-type,” “concrete walls” and “a retaining wall,” and “a white flat-roof” and “boxes of steel plates”.
Rethinking the whole residential are from the way this house exists would suggests us to rediscover potentials and richness of all elements with different histories in the area and space among those.
