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Architects: Kenzo Makino & Associates
- Year: 2018
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Photographs:Toshiyuki Yano
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Lead Architects: Kenzo Makino & Associates
Text description provided by the architects. Enclosed fence in Kyoto puts the residence’s living environment together, while serving as a gate and a backdrop of the front garden. The existing house has a frontage of 5mwide and 4.5m deep, and the space was enough for two carparking. The clients needed however no parking space, instead they would rather have a Japanese garden. They wished also to change the whole image of the existing exterior and the house by renovating this frontage into an attractive approach.
First, we planned a square-shaped enclosure in the existing open space with latticed sliding doors and gave different characters to the inside and the outside. Inside the fence you can arrange a garden like a tsubo-niwa, and the outside serves to keep the space neat and tidy; items such as bicycles, outdoor units, and cleaning tools that are necessary but not compatible with the beauty of the garden can be stored behind and they can be easily taken out for everyday use.
From this squared fence, eaves come out all around. Having the size of a roof ridge cap, the eaves keep the water out of wooden lattice, being made seamlessly of a sheet of galvanized steel. Seen from the street, the fence looks like a small building with its eaves almost resembling a roof. It softens a solitary image of the house front and creates a group of living environments in which the house, new fences, gardens, existing fences, mailbox, etc. are connected with each other. Thus, without major refurbishment of the main building itself, we could change the quality of the whole environment.
In addition to those architectural issues above, we propose a prototype as solution for the conflict between traditional cityscape of Kyoto and its current building regulations. Although Kyoto is known for its historical wooden buildings densely settled, modern urban fire prevention doesn’t allow wooden gate more than 2m high to be built. To achieve wooden space with wooden joinery, which is difficult in fire protection area, the height of the fence is kept lower than 2m, so that we could avoid installing fireproof sleeve walls additionally.
Each side of the fence has a span of 3.64 m with its height maximal 2 m, with 3/10pitched roof on top. And the wood is not treated non-combustible. In order to satisfy all of these, the columns and beams are made of steel. By using T-beam, the cross-sectional performance and shape of the beam are matched with the the roof, while the installation of the base material being kept compact and reasonable. This could be a general solution for similar conditions, as it is normally difficult to realize wooden fence with gabled roof in the urban area of Kyoto.
