"House in Miyanomachi"

This house is built in old residential area where the narrow roads run over.

The surrounding the site, there are many houses with garden, but most of them are too near by the neighborhood each other ,so can not keep the extent of the site.

I aimed at solving the three problems at the same time in the a densely built-up area.

1-Designing the volume of the house so small as not to stand out in the area.
2-Keeping the privacy from the circumference.
3-Designing the rooms which has no border between outside and inside.And,makes room to be able to enjoy outdoor feelings.

I adopted the plan of ''House in Yokoo'' which involve the outside in the inside of the house.
This way has an effect in this similar site where difficult to keep the privacy.

This plan is surrounded by ''outdoor-air space'', and in the center of the house, there is courtyard where invite even the rain.

The ''outer living'' next to the courtyard is filled with the outside air.
The inner living and the Japanese-style room arranged around the ''outer living'' are united with semi-outdoors space filled with fresh air by opening the their sliding doors.

In the a densely built-up area, we can leave the door open to the fresh air.

The level of open to air can be adjusted by opening and shutting door in the outer part of the house.
This semi-outdoor space is the corridor to join each room, is the extended living, and is the inner-garden.
It functions as shade of a tree in summer,and as the jacket in winter in this house.

(Kazunori Fujimoto)