House of Aoba Houses around this site have all of the windows and gardens facing south direction.We felt like most designers agreed upon a certain rule in design. When we first visited this site, we were surprised that it was surrounded by houses and it was a very dark. But we found the sunlight from the gaps of the houses. We thought that setting up proper distances among houses is important to get enough sunlight for this site. At first, we made two volumes in south and north sides.We decided to rotate the center square volume to 45 degrees to make enough distance from the houses in the north side. On the other hand, south side of this house is positioned along the shape of the site. At the same time we provided a gap between two volumes. As a result, it created two triangle gardens and provided some light from the small opening in the inside.We mean that this house can get enough sunlight from the gaps of the neighboring /surrounding houses in the outside and gaps from the two volumes from the inside. On the other side, there is another concept to make in planning. Each rooms are arranged in certain order putting into consideration how family/users are going to use them in daily life. There are no doors provided for each spaces. We created a common passage/hallway for the spaces. The entrance, kitchen, dinning room, living room, kids room and bedroom were placed right next to each other.The relation of two gardens and the living space is the most important. We notice that the family spends the longest time in the living space so we made the design more flexible. The living space could be extended to the garden to provide a wider space.The living space in the first floor gets enough sunlight from the small opening from the inside and two gardens which have enough distance from the neighboring houses. That makes the space bright the whole time during the day.
