T-Apartment / Soeda and Architects

Architects: Soeda And Architects – Takayuki Soeda
Location: Kanagawa, Japan
Structural engineer: Masaki Yoshida/YSE
Constructor: Watanabe Isamu Komuten
Project area: 456 sqm
Project year: 2005 – 2007
Photographs: Takumi Ota

The site is located in a crowded area where houses, apartments and small factories closed up. It is 7.5meter wide and 22meter depth, faces the street on the east and is surrounded by the neighboring buildings in other side, not good enough for sunlight and perspective. I had to clear these handicaps to provide comfortable living space.

We arranged three wooden volumes to long side of the site, and give them various forms in careful consideration of the sunlight, the visibility of a sky from the rooms, shape of the court, road diagonal and other regulations. The building was plated with silver galvanized steel sheet and the court-yard covered with white gravel to make the light reflections brighter for rooms. The building was plated with silver galvanized steel sheet and the court-yard covered with white gravel to enhance the brightness and natural light entering the first floor apartments.

The two voids between the three volumes separate each unit and clear up noise problem from next rooms. Each room had 4 meter high ceilings and had lofts to once again maximize the living space.

Generally, an apartment is divided into appropriable space and communal space obviously, but We erase the border between the court as an appropriable space and the corridor as a communal space. Our intention is to dispel a stiffness of apartment.