Near Fukuma Beach, known for its beautiful sunsets, a friend who is also the client found a piece of land with an old house built in 1979. The project began with a consultation on whether this old house could be renovated into a combination shop and guesthouse.
The single-story irimoya-style wooden structure had signs of cheap renovations, such as printed plywood exterior walls and polycarbonate corrugated roofing, but the original structure was evidently well-built. The knotless cypress pillars, the impressive large domestic pine beams, and the long-span log girders were truly remarkable. Although 1979 is not old enough to be considered an old folk house, it represented the last era when high-quality materials were still available at affordable prices, allowing ordinary people in rural areas to build well-crafted wooden houses. Even as we reinterpret in our own way, engaging in dialogue with buildings crafted with pride by skilled carpenters and reviving their forgotten excellence is the mission of those involved in architecture.
Access for the shop was planned from the road side. For the guesthouse, the original entrance was used while reducing its size. Pillars that did not affect structural integrity and also interfered with the flow of movement were removed. Pillars that fell into the concrete floor had their bases replaced, and structural plywood was added in necessary locations to ensure the required load-bearing walls. Horizontal rigidity was ensured by securing the rafters with braces. Regarding insulation, it was determined that the earthen walls already provided sufficient insulation performance, so they were maintained as is. New walls and the underside of the roof decking in the residential area were supplemented with glass wool, and the underneath of the flooring was supplemented with extruded polystyrene foam.
From the beginning, I considered removing the ceiling, but the single-story irimoya roof structure has a high ridge beam. If we planned to have a shop on the road side and a guesthouse on the garden side, a massive wall parallel to the ridge beam would inevitably rise. However, simply dividing the space with a 5.3-meter-high wall would not showcase the beautiful timber frame and, more importantly, lacked a human scale. Therefore, I decided to set back the upper part of the large wall on the guesthouse side, starting from 2.1 meters up, towards the shop side. A 2.1-meter-high catwalk was created on the guesthouse side, while a lowered ceiling naturally emerged on the shop side. The shop had a concrete floor that was lower than the guesthouse floor, resulting in a suitably low ceiling height of 2.33 meters. On the guesthouse side, the pillars are exposed above the catwalk, and the natural light streaming in from the glass roofing tiles beautifully highlights the timber frame.
Reflecting on the approach, it was a rhetorical reversal of negatives and positives: exposing the structure that was once hidden by the ceiling, while concealing the cypress pillars behind a wall that was previously revealed as a half-timbered wall. Revealing what was once considered beautiful only when hidden—such as a dynamic structure—might be seen as shameless by the original carpenters of this house. However, given the prevalence of weak architecture in contemporary times, we find ourselves wanting to fully reveal and celebrate that robust, muscular form.
