-
Architects: Chidori Studio
- Area: 112 m²
- Year: 2022
-
Photographs:Yasuhiro Nakayama
-
Manufacturers: LIXIL , NEW LIGHT POTTERY, fujie textile
-
Lead Architect: Yusuke Oka
“Contributes marginal space to the city” - This two-story wooden house is located in an educational area of Kanazawa City. The surrounding area has greenery and spacious public spaces, including parks, schools, and a stadium. The vacant lot behind the main site is the site of a former bank dormitory, with a clear view of the trees of the stadium beyond. The client requested "a house with large openings to the landscape beyond the vacant lot. However, the vacant lot behind the site has the potential for a large building to be constructed in the future.
In addition, the front road is a T-junction, so there are places where the line of sight goes to the back of the house. Therefore, we decided to build a large terrace, which was another request, in a position that would connect the open landscape beyond the vacant lot with the openness of the T-junction of the front road and open the living room through the terrace. When looking at the building from the T-junction of the front road, the terrace, which looks like a large cavity in the building, creates a blank space in the congested residential area, allowing the eye to pass through to the greenery and sky of the stadium, which is located just behind the residential area. In a landscape where houses stand side by side, the terrace's large air space highlights the uniqueness of the surrounding environment.
To enable the owner, a physiotherapist, to run his own business in the future, the first floor has an earthen floor with a long horizontal opening to the front street, a space for treatment, a window environment with a good view from the outside, and a privacy-securing bedroom and water room concentrated on the back side. The ceiling is kept low to create a relaxed atmosphere in this private space, and the horizontal windows are used to emphasize the flat length of the building, creating an elongated cross-sectional composition. The second floor is a spacious and open one-room house with a large sweep-out window and high ceilings, which can be used as an integral part of the terrace.
The terrace is roofed with a large roof that is continuous with the LDK, making it an outdoor space that is easy to use even in the Hokuriku region, which has heavy rainfall and snowfall, and adopting a no-snowfall roof, which is common in Hokkaido housing. The main openings on the first and second floors are rotated 90 degrees to change the way light enters the space, the view, and the connection to the outside when moving between the upper and lower floors.
Although it is a clear two-story structure, it is not a superficial manipulation but an attempt to design a generous place that differs between the upper and lower floors through architectural techniques such as the arrangement of terraces, differences in the proportions of the rooms, and the composition and orientation of the openings.
