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Architects: Aki Hamada Architects
- Area: 161 m²
- Year: 2018
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Photographs:Kenta Hasegawa
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Manufacturers: Fuji Sash, IOC Flooring, Inoue Syoji, McNeel, Sangetsu, Takagi
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Lead Architects: Aki Hamada, Takeshi Tanabe, Musashi Makiyama
Text description provided by the architects. In this extension project, the existing part of the house was a 13-year-old type conformity approval house, built by Misawa Homes Co., Ltd. Located at a corner site in a suburban residential area in Tama Hills, the house had a hair salon on the ground floor. Regular customers of this private salon mainly consisted of local residents. The client decided to expand the building, putting future business expansion in perspective.
This extension is mainly characterized by lattice made of wood and mirror-finish stainless steel placed outside against the glass walls. Taking into account blocking and reflection of direct sunlight throughout the year, the arrangement and angle were determined to maximize blocking of sunlight in summer and acquisition of sunlight in winter. It also functions as a flexible screen that allows you to change the shielding mode according to the usage by setting the parameter of the viewpoint of privacy.
The unconfined elevation plan – not restricted in the structure – filters light and lines of sight, while reflecting the movement in the sky and street and creating an image-like elevation plan that changes with time. It is architecture with an elevation as a modern decorated shed in a suburban residential area.
In contrast to the existing part that has few openings, the extension part functions as a heat/light collection device. This aids further connections between the interior environment and the outside world. Shortly after moving in to the house, the client had responded to changes in the outside environment sensitively and had already grown a personal preference on light and heat that change with time. It is like actively finding a place to stay, based on such existence of patches of the changing environment. We believe that an ideal relationship between architecture and humans in subsequent generations is an environment that invokes dynamic human activities, rather than a convenient environment with air-conditioning and lightings.
In the ground floor plan of the hair salon, it was requested to create an unusual and intimate residence yet keeps privacy. We set the existing air-conditioning and lighting positions on the ceiling as the boundary conditions, and created a lattice ceiling forming a single three dimensional curved surface. The lattice of the ceiling was strictly designed according to the dimensions of the irregularities of the red pine tree placed on the wall. We tried to make a more intimate space by this lattice securing the light distribution and illuminance while hiding the facility, and continuously changing to the wall that controls the privacy on the shampoo station side.
