lofty cube

Studio NOA's new residence entrance is a large main hall featuring a 6m high ceiling which serves as a shared common space. It contains a stairwell leading to and connected with the other rooms. This relatively large void gives the residence a sense of spatial continuity as well as openness from the slightly small individual rooms in the house. The Architect created a loft space that can serve as a future children’s room just above the entrance which is currently being used by the husband as a reading area to indulge his love of books. An underground mezzanine space leading down from the main hall serves as a bedroom with ample natural light and ventilation. Leading up from the main hall, the observer is greeted with a compact kitchen and dining area equipped with a food preparation area, storage units for tableware and crockery, dishwasher, rice cooker, microwave oven and garbage bins. Just above this kitchen-dining area, with its low ceiling due to legal height restrictions, a space for wash basin and bathroom and a skylight overhead.

concrete lantern

Akitoshi Ukai/AUAU designed this small house for a young couple and their two children. The Architects have created the necessary life function into zonal arrangements and it was put in the fold box three-dimensionally. In addition, the wall that held the structure concurrently was turned over and the space was divided loosely. In essence, the thin slab was gradually accumulated from the 1st to the 2nd floor in a human scale and its aimed at a sense of intimacy. A suspender door made out of polycarbonate is hung on the centre of the house and functions as an illuminator as well as partitioning the space in time. Outside, the living was set up in the south so that valuable direct light can reach the interior of the house.

fine detailing

TSC Architects have designed a minimalistic house situated in Hinomiya, Japan. Similar to their project in Mukouyama, this residence shares the same strategy of a softened aesthetic thanks to a limited, yet thoughtful, material selection and color palette. The Architects design explores the changing quality of light within the residence as large openings and slatted cedar screens allow natural light to penetrate the open floor plans. The main living spaces open onto the courtyard as a way to expand the interior with views of the sky. They have also paid a particular attention to detailing, not only with regards to the material, but also when incorporating natural elements.

three tako sushi please

The new Haiku Sushi is located at the open courtyard of the recently completed Shanghai International Finance Center. Imagine Native utilised the concept of origami as the major driven force throughout the restaurant design. Looking closer, the Architects have sub divided the space in different zones, sushi bar, drinking bar, two main dining areas, booth seating and tatami rooms with each of these zones formed by an origami feature constructed by colors and different materials (i.e. perforated aluminum composite panels, translucent stone panels and linen fabrics). They have also used different lighting effects to create each zone's spatial character. An origami suspended on the ceiling from the entrance to the VIP rooms unifies each zones and creates a spatial transition throughout the restaurant.

parallel axis

Shinichi Ogawa + Associates created a house on a 1.5m grid module in every XYZ spatial axis. This site is at a corner of the new residential area in Kawasaki-shi, Kanagawa, Japan. The space is composed of a solid cube of 9.0m x 9.0m x 6.0m and a cubic void of 4.5m x 4.5m x 6.0m. The hall, children’s room, kitchen are laid out to surround the living-dining room on the ground floor. Meanwhile, on the first floor; the bedroom, walk-in closet, bathroom and court are are laid out to surround the double floor-height void which is 6.0m high. Each room of the interior space is connected through the void of the living room as well as letting the sunlight inside by cutting a geometric shape of the sky.

creases and folds

For this project, Akihisa Hirata new intepretation of the house not as the act to produce an area like a box but as a folded surface created by the movement of the ground. Here, the Architects have found the balance of the pressure between the interior and exterior thus produces the bumped walls and roofs which creates one big volume with subtle division. As one approach the house, we can see the jostle between the inside and the outside in each rooms (i.e. the direct shape of roofs, diagonal protrusion created by external stairs as well as the distortion of space by the folded walls).

deathly still

EASTERN Design Office was commissioned by a client to design him a house awaiting death in the next 15 years. The clients request was for a house awaiting death, for the moment when life is extinguished, not the sunset, but the desire to see the sunrise. I know it sounds rather dark but personally it is so refreshing when such an honest brief is given to any Architects. I'm almost jealous.  This particular project takes to a beach far beyond the sublime Suzuka mountain range, past the ravines of the Ise Penninsula and exceeds the boundaries of this the clients own site. The Architects have created several polygonal windows that plays with the early morning light, with the overlapping windows and accumulation of light and shadow, the entire building erupts in a hymn to the morning. The distance from the site to the beach is 150m and its breadth extends for 7km.

'Are you going to live alone?'.

'Alone. Sometimes I want to call over friends'. A quiet pause, 'I want to hear the crash of a wave.'

pawson-esque

Shinichi Ogawa + Associates designed this house for a couple in Itoman-shi, Okinawa, Japan. The house is built on a 3m grid module in all XYZ spatial directions. A functional layout is created by inserting a void of 3m x 18m which is the courtyard for the house and a wall-like furniture into the concrete structure. The Architects composition is characterised by the division of the house into two areas by a wall furniture. Firstly being an area composed of the living room, dining room, and bedroom with the exterior court in a linear arrangement and secondly, the other space is composed of the kitchen, toilet and study room. 

white solution

NRM-Architects Office have designed an environmentally friendly house by using a low-tech method to control the room temperature without much use of air conditioning. The Architects have avoided any openings facing on the south elevation, which is one level to help them accomplish this environmental and people friendly solution.

narrow serenity

Showa-cho, Japan is a quiet place (in Japanese standards) even though it is downtown. The design of the residence has a narrow frontage, which is a part of a row house (17.89m x 3.94m). The design of the residence is that the street in front of the house could be a part of scenery rather than to be closed towards the street. Novel idea but Fujiwaramuro Architects big challenge is in the progress of the planning; it could take only less than 3 meters for effective flange width inside when it was built in such a long narrow lot, so the main solution was to use cross section construction. From the south side that faces the street, a tree was planted.

The living room has 5.6m of ceiling height, 'stairwell and stairs spaces', '4 layers of construction from basement to 3rd floor each rooms', 'a small outside stairwell'. Each floor is not piled up, but adopted the skip floor method, which made a gap. By doing this , the Architects have made it possible to see the outside street from the back rooms so, that it could be unified with outside of the house and create a larger atmosphere. Despite the stairs being in the center of the house it is not blocking the view of outside. Glass was used for every partition wall. Slits were also made on the floors and ceilings thus creating a sense of a bigger space.

poison ivy

This was a deserted house that the locals called a haunted house. It doesn't help that there is ivy covering the whole structure. SPEAC renovated it as a dwelling and office. The Architects removed all the partitions and ceilings, reinforced the structure with the diagonal braces and walls. By doing this, the rooms looked wider, the floors are painted in white except for the wooden structure of the roof and columns of the 2nd floor.