© Yohei Sasakura

hitects: TOFU architects
Location: Hikone, Shiga, Japan
Project Architect: Fumiya Ogawa+Tomonobu Higashino
Project Area: 178.76 sqm
Completion: 2011
Photographs: Yohei Sasakura

© Yohei Sasakura

This building which has grand stairs is composed of duplex house and a cafe. The site is facing the shopping street leading to the Hikone castle from Hikone station in Shiga.

© Yohei Sasakura

The owner wanted a cafe space on the first floor, so the approach was needed to the third floor.
Considering the daily uses, the grand stairs were surrounded gradually around the building.

© Yohei Sasakura

We adjusted the level of the grand stair to the existing level of the arcade. As a result, creating a facade that was incorporated arcade looks interesting.
The stairs are not only for vertical movement, it can be used as a continuous private outdoor space with different heights.
For example, it can be a children’s playground, garden, drying place and so on.
The owner manages a Chinese-style cafe on the first floor.

© Yohei Sasakura

We placed Toilets and Cooking space under the stairs,therefore seats area could place square and also tables can be laid efficiently.
The garden is located on the back of the store,so there could have a comfortable space through their eyes.
The interior uses the wood which has good affinity with a concrete, giving the impression of comfort.

© Yohei Sasakura

The second floor has the room of a parent households, and the third floor is the room of the child household.
The interior of the house has given the warmth of wood using a plywood OSB.
We used the polished OSB plywood,so the plywood became smooth and the wood became abstraction like using wood chips.
Cite:
Ross , Kritiana . "H-House / TOFU architects" 30 Dec 2011. ArchDaily. Accessed 30 Dec 2011.

© Rupert Singleton

Architects: Juliana & Tristan
Location: Brookvale Park, Singapore
Project Area: 150 sqm
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Rupert Singleton, ImageGarden

© Rupert Singleton

Beginnings
Tucked away in a corner off the main road, surrounded by lush greenery, sits one of those increasingly rare and threatened species of our built environment, a private walk up apartment with space to breathe and quietude for the soul. Like others built in its era, Brookvale Park combine both a stroke of practicality in its economy of scale, whilst maintaining sensitivity to the spatial proportions and distances that is required for its inhabitants to live life without the intrusive pressures of urbanity.
Individual dwelling units enjoy that rare commodity of a generous span of balcony, whilst internally, a sense of play abounds as different horizontal planes separate the public domain from the private. Belie this apartment’s aging exterior lies a potential sophistication of spaces which we recognised in our search for a home some years back.

© Rupert Singleton

After viewing countless different yet similar cookie cutter apartment layouts, we instantly saw the possible beauty of this top storey corner apartment. The slanted roof, though covered by the false ceiling, and diffused sunlight through the side skylight gently illuminating the interior, sealed the deal and we set out to sculpt the apartment into our home.

Revealing the beauty
The entire original ceiling was removed and a series of solid timber rafters, concealed and darkened over the years, was revealed. These were sand down, restored, given its due recognition and fundamental objective to soar overhead and form the anchor of the apartment. Lush greenery, now framed by newly installed unadorned steel framed glass windows, provides the necessary cross ventilation that every tropical home should embrace.

© Rupert Singleton

Cool grey stones greet the visitor as one steps into the living room and a built in book case meets the eye. A long bench which functions as the main settee is integrated with a series of steps, serving to transit from the stone floor to the timber boards on the split upper level of the unit. The open kitchen now serves as the new back drop of the public domain.
The new Master suite takes over the entire rear portion, occupying what was once two guest bedrooms, a kitchen and a service bath. The collective space was given a complete overhaul, exposing the original roof rafters and creating an uninterrupted flow from the intimate bed space to the striking, opened bathroom.

© Rupert Singleton

The original Master bedroom now functions as a study. The wall separating the study and living room was removed as much as possible, allowing one to peer into either space through the voids of the book case.
The interplay of volumes within the apartment, brought about by the combination of the pitched roof, raised platforms and torn down walls reveal a strong yet flexible hierarchy of space that was intuitively understood and celebrated through the use of materials and careful detailing. The resultant space is one that has been crafted and honed to meet the refined sensibilities of modern life.

An endangered species
Unfortunately, with economics and “p.s.f“ (per square foot) figures rather than refinement of the living space being the driving force behind todays’ developments, one would be hard pressed to find an equivalent sophistication in the modern designs of today. Walk-up apartment blocks as old as Brookvale are an “endangered species” in our city-country of Singapore. Many are “en-bloc” (where owners of separate units band together to collectively sell their properties to a developer) and put up for tender for redevelopment, often replaced by typical floor plates which aim to pack as many units as possible into any given site. These alluring apartments are most often, torn down to give way to a bland permutation of soulless architectural condition and utilitarian living.

Brookvale is no exception
It is currently in the midst of a potential en-bloc tender and is in the mercy of prospective buyers versus the dwellers. The hope of publishing our apartment is to tell the story of such a charm that cannot be substituted with pristine new living quarters. Our wish is for like-minded individuals to cherish these living spaces and live in as they were meant to be.
 
Cite:
King , Victoria . "Brookvale Park / Tristan & Juliana" 23 Jan 2012. ArchDaily. Accessed 23 Jan 2012.

The Pentagonal House by Kazuya Morita Architecture

 
Kazuya Morita Architecture have completed the Pentagonal House in Tsushima city, Japan.

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"Description from the architect:
Think about roofs, we can say it is another landscape, which is created from where the architecture would build. As well as the natural landscape has, they have full of attractiveness for the space to live for us. And at the same time, roofs had formed by integration of different kind of technologies, so we can say roofs as “meta-technology” of architecture. If we start designing architecture from thinking about roofs as meta-technology, we have chance to deliver another technology for making roofs to be better landscape to live.
The site is within a calm village near Nagoya, Japan. It is a housing for young couple, and just next to this architecture, there is an old Japanese style house their parent lives. To respect for and harmonize with neighboring environment, we delivered traditional hipped roof as many neighboring houses has. This characteristic pentagonal geometry of plan was delivered to have the maximum space in this site and adequate open space around it. Then we start to think about how to live under the second landscape, pentagonal hipped roof.
Five main structural walls were set in radially, and it makes possible to take in the outside spaces as extension of interior spaces. In the center of the architecture, radial walls were cut off in dome shape, to make space for a dining table. Here, under the peak of the landscape, we have tall ceiling height and whole families can enjoy their dishes all together and wide range views to gardens. In 5 surrounding spaces with low ceiling height, under the skirts of the landscape, people can stay calm and relax with appropriate distance from others, just like a life in our traditional house.
Besides delivering this characteristic geometry ( it is a kind of technology) to the plan of this architecture, we tried to use the most usual wooden structure system what most Japanese houses are constructed nowadays. Walls were finished with round corner in Japanese traditional white plaster

Location : Tsushima city, Aichi pref. JAPAN
Program : private housing
Structure : wood
Site area : 692.63 sq.
Built area : 87.73sq.
Design : Kazuya Morita Architecture Studio
Structure engineer : Mitsuda Structural Consultants
Construction : HATANOKOUMUTEN Co,. Ltd.
Photo : Shinichi Watanabe
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© Youngchea PARK

Architects: Hyungnam LIM, Eunjoo ROH, Studio GAON
Locations: Chungcheongnam-do, Korea
Project Year: 2011
Project Area: 75.6 sqm
Photographs: Youngchea PARK

This house sits on a hill facing Jinaksan on the outskirts of South Korea’s Geumsan, Chungcheongnam-do. South of the project site stands houses on modest hills and to the north towers Jinaksan, which frames a lake in the distance. The wind escapes from the valley and blows across the land, passing through the hills.

© Youngchea PARK

From the semi-open space of 26 square meters in this simple house of 43 square meters, the mountains seem close enough to touch, and a simple path winds its way below as part of an unobstructed view of a majestic landscape. Clearing the land at the front of the house, we’ve formed a garden and created showers and a deck for outdoor entertainment. This house is designed for its owner, his books, his students, and his fellow teachers, and it is designed to simultaneously reflect Western wooden structure and embrace the space of Korean traditional architecture.

© Youngchea PARK

In the twenty-some years since we’ve worked for architecture, we have struggled to understand the essence of Korean architecture. The element of Korean architecture that distinguishes it from Japanese or Chinese architecture is, without a doubt, the fact that, in Korean architecture, space moves and flows; that is, a space in Korean architecture is not one frozen frame, but rather, different spaces that interact and change. The rooms of this house follow that flow with ease, and both light and wind leave traces of their presence.

The land on which this house now stands brought to mind a house called Do-San Seodang, which belonged to a philosopher of the 15th century by the name of Yi Hwang, and so we suggested a house of a style that reflected his to the clients. Although Do-San Seodang is small, simple, and linear, its design is conceptually rich. Yi Hwang embraced a theory called Gyung(敬), which called for humility in oneself and respect for others, as well as a simple, practical, and rational lifestyle. Do-San Seodang is Yi Hwang as the present, the books that formed and supported him as the past, and the students that carry on his teachings as the future. And it is beautiful.

© Youngchea PARK

A small and simple house that holds the universe… Just hearing these words makes my heart race. The house we dream of is not one that is large or grand enough to be seen from the moon; rather, it is one full of intent. Do-San Seodang is a creation that we as architects dream of and aspire to emulate.

Most of us obsess over owning a house, and we obsess over the size of that house. Modern-day houses have grown larger and larger, and their occupants, too, are accumulating more and more material wealth, reducing available space and forcing expansion. People typically are born into small bodies and return to an even smaller final resting place. Why, then, do we desire houses that are too big for us? Our possessions swell to an unnecessary magnitude, and in the end we are burdened by their weight. We are neither kings nor gods, nor are we aliens. Like clothing that does not fit, houses that do not fit their owners appear unnatural. Where do we draw the line between too small and too large? People believe that if their houses grow as their life progresses, they have achieved success. An extravagant house, however, does not guarantee happiness or satisfaction.

Plan

The client wanted a small and simple house in which he could spend his remaining years with his wife, and the arrangement of the bedroom and guest room, a minimal kitchen and bathroom, and the attic-turned-study in this house strongly resembles the layout of Do-San Seodang. Coincidentally, he parallels Yi Hwang not only in that he is a scholar, but also in that he is now the same age as the philosopher was when he began to build his Do-San Seodang. This house is the past and the present and the future, and it will become a space that exists in harmony with both nature and the client’s students.

Cite:
P , Amber . "House in Geumsan / Eunjoo ROH + Studio GAON" 04 Aug 2011. ArchDaily. Accessed 06 Aug 2011.

The Water House by Li Xiaodong Atelier

The water house is a private house, located at the foot of snow mountain Yulong in Lijiang. Sitting on a wide open sloping site, which has a panoramic view towards Lijiang, an ancient trading settlement whose old town is famous for its historic network of waterways and bridges

The site lies at the foot of Yulong mountain, its peaks forming a dramatic backdrop to Li’s architecture. The house synthesises traditional forms and techniques to make a contemporary building that resonates with place and history. and the surrounding landscape. Conceived as an interlocking series of contemplative, inward-looking courtyards, the house has an open yet closed courtyard space. Closed in the sense, it is “secured” and “separated” physically from the ‘outside world” by design elements such as stonewall, reflective pool and leveling; yet it is open visually towards the outside environment.

The low profile architectural language by using local material and simple “non-experimental” tectonic skill is meant to blend the “artificial” into the nature and local culture. Here, focus is given to space and atmosphere. Emphasis is on local-texture and non-decorative detailing, the idea is to make the house a background, from which, nature could be appreciated to its extreme. The cluster of simple timber and glass pavilions with tile-clad pitched roofs evokes traditional forms but is still evidently of its time. Lightweight, slatted walls delicately veil the light, and bamboo plants form a luxuriant green heart in the building’s central courtyard.

The cooling, calming presence of water threads through the house and low eaves frame and enclose indoor/outdoor spaces. The interior space is a minimum design, the intention of which is to leave indoor space clear and simple as much as possible, so that nature could be appreciated more from within. Li considers details are important contributors to the final results of the architecture, in this case, instead of decorative details, seamless clean details are designed to provide elegance to the overall effect of architecture.Besides the steel structure, which was contracted to a professional team, the rest of the construction was done by local villagers, this is not simply to reduce the cost, but a clear message of regional engagement with architecture practice in the local context.

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