The proposal for a community housing development in Tomisato city, a small town close to Narita Airport in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture, takes as its point of departure the Japanese concept of Engawa or verandah space that can be found in many forms of traditional housing types. Designed by INDEX architecture, the competition called for the design of eight detached houses on a semi rural plot that questions the validity of suburban expansion. Therefore, their design proposes a new approach to living on the fringes of the Tokyo ‘megacity’. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The Engawa space typically forms a perimeter to the internal spaces of a house and creates a type of interstitial buffer zone between the interior and exterior of a house – a space neither of the inside or the outside. Traditionally, the Engawa has been used as a kind of outdoor room flowing directly from the house which particularly during the warmer seasons was a place where one could appreciate the beauty of nature.
