Japanese housing

Akitsu-cho, Higashi-Hiroshima City, along the Seto Inland Sea in Japan. The abundant environmental resources have nurtured a rich industrial landscape, including sake breweries, oyster farming, shipbuilding, etc. "Roaster’s house", located in a small shopping street in Akitsu in Hiroshima, This is a two-story wooden store/house that was repaired after it was flooded by heavy rains in western Japan. The inundation damage added to the older owner’s shopping district and many private stores were forced to close. Tsutomu Yoshizaki Tsutomu Yoshizaki Before the renovation, the roastery rented a part of the clothing shop run by the owner's mother. However, starting with the lack of a cafe space, the owner wanted to take the... Altro

【Background】 This is a renovation project for a 44-year-old apartment. The owner is an enthusiast of weaving wooden basket bags. The owner's requests were to have an earthen floor space that could be used as a studio, to enjoy the views of the river and cityscape from the windows, and to optimize the living space compactly. Caption Caption Caption Caption To achieve this, we arranged the core living area in a box-like shape at an angle, with the bathroom, bed, closets etc. centralized in the middle. Gaps were left between the existing concrete walls and the core space. These gaps create a trapezoidal floor plan that allows the space to flexibly expand and contract, forming a continuous cloister wrapping around. This en... Altro

The house is sited on a path,where old houses and tradition remain. At the end of the path is a Shinto shrine. yohei sasakura yohei sasakura Every year, omikoshi are carried along this path during the festivities of the Naginata Matsuri.For this residential project, we aimed to create a house which harmonizes with its con- text in both materiality and geometry. yohei sasakura yohei sasakura The house is in the hiraya style, composed of 3 consecutive kirizuma roofs.Through slits and apertures, blue skies are visible from the interior. Two gardens are born from shifts in spatial composition. One for “tranquility” and family. The other, for “movement” and hospitality. yohei sasakura yohei... Altro

This is a project to renovate an old house in Nara City. Various buildings of different ages stand on the site, sharing a corridor and a courtyard. The oldest and largest of them is a barn with a large atrium, built to store long logs. The barn had been little used for many years and had become weathered. The client wanted to renovate it into a comfortable living space. Keishiro Yamada We removed a large amount of mud walls that had detached from the bamboo framework due to continuous leaks, rebuilt the basement, reinforced columns and beams that had been weakened by termite and decay damage, and filled the roof and walls with insulation. Keishiro Yamada The atrium, converted into a large living room, leads to a Japanese-style r... Altro

This project is a renovation of a traditional Japanese house in Nara, Japan for a young couple and their children. The husband spent his childhood here and later his family lived in Tokyo, but in order to improve their work and lifestyle, they decided to renovate the vacant house and move in. Yohei Sasakura The house was built around 1930 and had been extended and remodeled several times, and there were no drawings or other documents available. When we removed the finishes to investigate, the history of the old renovations was revealed one after another in the floors, walls, and ceilings. Yohei Sasakura The earthen floor had been renovated into a kitchen and dining room, "engawa" - a semi-outdoor deck - had been converted into a... Altro

The site is located in an old and quiet neighborhood of Sakata city, Yamagata prefecture, near the national highway that runs through the Tohoku region. On house is designed for a family of four whose design brief detailed the need for a house that can cater to the individuality of each member of the family. The clients wanted a house where each member of the family can have their own space but they can feel the presence of others around them.   With this brief in mind, we scattered 3 towers on the large 330 square meter site and connected them using a deep eave band at the mid-level of the towers. When the residents travel in between the towers, they will invariably cross spaces, like the doma (cement floor) corridor or the terrace, under... Altro

The site is located in the dense residential area of Narayama, Akita city, facing a row of a thousand cherry trees lining the bank of the Taihei River. The house is designed for a couple and their child on a small land of 92.5 msq, located at the fork of a road.   What was required from the design: A house with the ability to open out to its the surroundings, despite the harsh Akita snow, and enjoy the view of the cherry blossom trees lining the Taihei River from the comfort of the house. Since the site is located in a dense residential district, the narrow road fronting the site sees heavy traffic. We felt that a conventional construction approach would seem oppressive to this surrounding, and thus the two walls facing the road are incline... Altro

Located in the mountain basin of Uonuma, Japan; the city does a complete turnaround from warm humid summers to snow covered winters. Here the temperature can reach up to 30 degree celcius in summers with over 80% humidity, while in winter the city might receive snowfall reaching up to 3 meters in height. Thus, a house built in this region needs to not only face the adversities of the land but also create an environment where the residents can thrive within their surroundings.   The conventional design approach to counter this snow is to elevate the living spaces, use mechanical means to melt rooftop snow using ground water and have thick walls with additional insulation. But all these measures create an isolation between the inside a... Altro

A private house in Gifu prefecture which consists of traditional Japanese rooms and modern style LDK (Living, Dining and Kitchen). Japanese rooms are to be used in multiple way, sleeping, chilling, funeral etc. Doors of Japanese rooms are shoji of "taiko-bari" (wrapped by Japanese paper like a drum) so that frames of shoji are blurred in daytime and clarified at night. Altro

This is a house for a couple and a small son in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. We designed a large house with a square plan and designed four small houses from each vertex. The gap between small houses becomes a crossroad. The small houses are designed to be alone and the crossroad is designed to stay with the family. Residents can live in and out of small houses and a large house. The windows of small houses are connected to the crossroad, and the windows of the large house are connected to the garden, gentle hills, trees of the forest, the sky and the clouds. Altro

Looking for the stable climate in the room This is a house in the northern part of Hyogo Prefecture for a couple and their two children. The construction site is a part of a place surrounded by mountains and the sky is overcast most of the days. I wanted to create light, stable indoor climate and came up with a plan of three sheds of house type arranged on a 1.8 m high, grey foundation platform. The level of the first floor was lowered by 760 mm below the ground to get firm basement, as the site was slant before the development, and to get more stable performance of the floor heating system of foundation heat condensing type utilizing the terrestrial heat. It was also expected that the whole site could be used like a garden as... Altro