The building stands in a residential area of Kyoto's Bikan Historical Quarter. It consists of a two-story steel-framed, gently curving main building and two subordinate houses with rafters spanning the main building. The façade is 2 m wide and 7.1 m high, with a single pane of glass 19 mm thick. The exterior walls of the main building have the same continuous sprayed finish regardless of whether or not there is a subordinate house, and the stairs to the first floor of the subordinate house on the west side pass through this exterior wall on their way to the first floor, and the door on the east side also passes through this wall. The finishes as an exterior wall and the thinness of the partition wall create both a clear boundary separating the inside and outside of the house and the daily comings and goings, creating a sense of distance between rooms that is difficult to grasp, and attempting to create depth in the life between the town, the site and the house.

Japan | Kyoto

Shinkenchiku December 2009 issue 156P