Text description provided by the architects. The project is a small residence for a couple with one child, situated in Nara, Japan. The neighborhood is determined by a large number of individual houses spread over a gentle slope facing south. During the design process, the lot right beside was yet empty and it was unclear what was going to be built. With this in mind, the design had to be autonomous, yet at the same time it should be able to react positively with whatever was going to be built next door.
The volume of the house is constituted of an uneven volume, split and shifted both in ground plan and elevation into sub-volumes that are visually separated, but connected through continuous lighting and ventilation.
The interior space is characterized by interconnected cubes with no doors, and privacy is ensured by deliberate nooks and narrowing between the rooms. Even though the house is relatively small with 80.84 sqm, the continuous spaces is feels deceivingly larger.
