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Architects: hitotomori
- Area: 300 m²
- Year: 2018
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Photographs:Hiroki Kawata
Text description provided by the architects. This is a renovation of a boxed-frame type reinforced concrete house facing an area of greenery that has been well-tended for fifty years in the town of Senri, Japan. When it comes to renovation, it is crucial for our design to maximise the inherent potential already found within a building. The building looks out over a large area of greenery and within already contains an abundance of airy spaces. It was our task to utilize these open spaces while at the same time considering each room’s proportions and details to create an even more intimate interplay between the natural greenery outside and the rooms themselves. In addition, a slanted roof supported by the building’s steel frame provided even more open space with which to work. In order that these voluminous spaces would be perceived not so much as ‘rooms’ but as an ‘environment’, our design took in the factors of heat, natural light, ventilation, and greenery to create a space which suggested to this camping and nature loving family a way of life where each and every member, by choosing their own favorite spots from the home environment, would be able create their own personal living space.
The exquisite blue of both the front stained-glass window and exterior walls already combined to give the entranceway one of the house’s defining characteristics. To bring this characteristic into the house and use it to maximum effect, we constructed the foyer and front hall floors, walls, and ceilings with mortar, and limited the materials we used to ones that would be dyed a rich blue when bathed in the light from the stained-glass.
The entrance to each room was already composed of a deep-set, low-ceilinged veneer tunnel. Our design utilized the contrast between this tunnel and the wider space found within the room to further emphasize the intimate relationship of each room’s open blue airiness and the natural greenery outside, and draw out the inherent potential in both entranceway and room.
Within the passage of time we can find divers objects of beauty; through our design, we have endeavored to create a space in which these objects realize their full potential, a space in which they are respected and held in the highest regard, a space in which a home is fully and truly revived.
