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Architects: EASTERN Design Office
- Area: 134 m²
- Year: 2019
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Photographs: Koichi Torimura
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Lead Architect: Anna Nakamura, Taiyo Jinno
Text description provided by the architects. This house is located in a residential area in Kyoto City, Japan. It is not a historical district, rather modern houses, old wooden houses and middle size apartment houses are lined up side by side. 500 meter mountain range opens to the north and west side and cityscape faces to the south and east side. Therefor it has a nice view from the 3rd floor. This architecture is designed with concrete square tubes piled up in two lines up to four steps. The section of many square tube is the start of this design.
As a method these tubes can technically be piled up limitless both horizontally and vertically. In this case the building is a single-family house, so they are piled up in 4 steps and in 2 lines to match the appropriate housing size. We perused a simple design method. The size of the square tubes is suitable to provide inner spatial comfort. When looking at the tubes from the front, it seems they are stacked without overlapping. (if you see it in detail, it has actually 15mm overlap.)
Several tubes are shifted to up and down. The square tubes serve as cantilevers. On the 2nd floor cantilever is 5.5meters, and on the 3rd floor it is 3.6 meters. The shape of the square tube is the structural element by itself. This structure allows large opening at the edge. The form of a tube is structurally strong.
On the 3rd floor, two openings in the ceiling (top light) each of 2 square meter are constructed under the pool on the 4th floor. The center of the top light is aligned to the center of the square tube. The light that comes in from these two top lights changes its color and is moving around the room each time of the day, and season by season.
The light that comes in from these openings is flickering due to the movement of the water and it brings a wavering light into the room. We can see people swimming on the 4th floor from the living room. The fake window on the 4th floor frames the city landscape like scenery in a picture, making it a symbolic view.
