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Architects: FUJIWALABO / Teppei Fujiwara Architects Labo
- Area: 102 m²
- Year: 2010
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Photographs:Sadao Hotta
Text description provided by the architects. House M is a residence in Setagaya for a young couple. They are both graphic designers who often work all hours at home, so we designed it centering on an outdoor space called Outside Living Room, which enables them to feel the outside air from every corner of the house.
Outside Living Room is surrounded by an exterior wall but is roofless, and the wall has a small opening toward the town. In Japanese cities, houses are built so densely that it is difficult to make good use of an open terrace. Here, since the living room is open upwards while closed from its neighbors, it works as a device to offer a relaxed lifestyle to enjoy the environment outside.
All of the rooms inside are designed in relations and distances towards the sound and sightlines in Outside Living Room. The whole house senses the air, light, sound and wind coming through the living room, which enables you to perceive the passage of time and the change of seasons without going outdoors.
Structure of the house is hybrid: the central pillar and the girder supporting the 2nd floor are steel frame, and a wooden “floor” is laid on this iron “XYZ-axis”. The house is a subtle combination of spacious rooms in sequence and intimate spaces to do work, which is hard to expect from a built area of just 40㎡.
The house is virtually single space - stretching from the semibasement to the 2nd floor - but reasonable distances are secured between each room as they are layered.
