House in Tendai

Among the several requests that the client made regarding this project, the one that piqued our interest the most was, “I’d prefer not to have any direct sunlight inside.” Somehow, he seemed to imply that he would rather live in a dark house. Recently, it has become almost commonplace to design bright residential interiors that are practically awash in natural light. Accordingly, the central concern in this project was to think about how we could avoid bringing too much light into the interior of the building. Not wanting to admit too much light into the house naturally involves reducing the number of windows that open onto the exterior. After giving much thought to how we could design this limited number of windows, we decided to use slit-like exterior spaces to create small notches in a single, large volume that would make up the residence. These exterior spaces would then also assume the functions of lighting and ventilation. Subdivided by these slits, the fragments of this single volume are in fact connected to each other by the large roof that covers them. This roof, too, seems to float suspended above each of the volumes that it covers, creating a series of horizontal slits beneath it. The result is a tranquil living space filled with indirect light, the moderate quantity of which has been carefully calibrated.