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Project Description from Kazuya Saito Architects:
This one-story house is for an old couple to spend the rest of their lives after retirement in.
The house is located in Sendai's hilly Yagiyama district which lies south of the Hirosegawa river terrace. It is a historical residential area that has been developing from the beginning of the Showa Era in the 1960s by scraping off bedrock. The site is surrounded by houses, apartment buildings, and a nearby house which the family of the client's son is living in, so the clients requested living in privacy, but a sunny and breezy house while considering connection with the nearby house.
To take appropriate distances from the surroundings, first I decided to put volume at the middle of the site. Instead of no window at outer walls, I took out four spaces as terraces from the volume: the entrance, a side door connecting to main house, a bright wash room, and a garden space softly divides living room and bedroom. Then setting high or small windows in those spaces allows daylight in with good ventilation while keeping privacy. As for the roof, I cut off the slope at the four corner of central volume to adjust to surrounding houses; besides, there is a skylight to release hot air and prompt natural ventilation.
The flat shape formed by equivalently arranged rooms including exterior terraces gives an impression that the space is unending. On the other hands, the space expression is ever changing since each room has various specifications; exterior to interior; woody color to inorganic white color; and flat ceiling to inclined ceiling. It is like African music which has a unique sound by playing various rhythm at the same time, that is to say, Yagiyama house is created as architecture by combining individual rhythm of each space. This kind of architecture is producing various time and space from moment to moment, so every day each client can find the place where each of them feels comfortable; such as the moment their grand children happily running around, family dinner with feeling a breeze, reading under the sunshine, or bath time under the star-filled sky. I hope this architecture achieved "fluctuation" of space which allows creative and fascinating life.
Project Details:
Location: Sendai, Miyagi, Japan
Program: Private Residence
Design: Kazuya Saito Architects
Structural design: Atsuhiro Nakahata + Yasushi Moribe
Builder: Kyoei Housing
Structure Wood
Number of stories: 1 Story
Max height: 5,330 mm (17.48 ft)
Site area: 468.96 ㎡ (5047.84 sq ft)
Building area: 137.47 ㎡ (1479.71 sq ft)
Total floor area: 137.47 ㎡ (1479.71 sq ft)
Design period: March 2011 - December 2011
Construction period: February 2012 - August 2012
Click here for interior panoramic photos of House Yagiyama.
5 Comments
In his email, architect Kazuya Saito told us:
"This house was started constructing after the Tohoku Japan Earthquake happened on March 11, 2011. We did not have enough hands and materials, but clients, builders and I created the house as hard as we could."
Congratulations to Kazuya Saito. I see nothing which would give evidence that this house was made under less than ideal conditions . . .
I am puzzled by one thing: in the last two photos, of the entrance in the evening, one photo shows a raised concrete pad next to the stone-paved stoop, while the other photo shows instead two light fixtures there. What explains this ?
SDR are you sure the light fixtures aren't just outside the image due to angle shown?
jeez SDR.. you should give up being an architect if you can't seem to understand simple photos as such. you know photos don't take 360 degree views right?
Really nice housing project. Modern, singular and with a personal style. Very good use of materials, color and textures, specially the metal skin in fronts. Beauty inner spaces, with class and design.
VERY GOOD JOB. Congratulations from Barcelona.
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