The project site is in a five-minute walk from Yotsuya Station located in a quiet residential area right behind the Shinjuku Street. This area holds many temples, shrines and also fairly dense housing. Like a spreading network of space, those houses and complexes fill the blank spaces between the streets and alleys. This housing complex was planned to be built on the site of a crank space with 10m of the frontage and 17m in depth. Due to the regulation for Shinjuku Ward studio apartments, 12 units of the housing complex was planned out including 9 units of less than 30m² of the floor area and 3 units of more than 30 m².
Volume Layout and Flow Lines to Maximize the Rental Area
The project site has 2m of setback from the property line. Normally the set back is tending to be provided to the south, and an approach is set to the north in order to gain the day light. However, the neighboring land located on the south of the project site has a passage to their flag-pole-like plot. And because of this condition on the south, adequate amount of daylight was expected to flow towards the project site. In order to gain as much of the building area as possible, the building mass is pushed towards the south, and the setback space is utilized as an approach garden and it also works as the evacuation passage which needs to be more than 2m width. As a result of the overall layout, the circulation space was studied in order to make all the 12 units accessible contained in the L-shaped volume. In this scheme, 2 void spaces were provided within the building mass as functioning stairways. With this compact stair cases, the floor areas of the rental area is increased. By using an efficient approach, the area of the common space was reduced even more efficiently than the typical one-sided corridor scheme.
