SN.House by atelierA5

Rose Etherington | 4 April 2011 6 comments

Japanese architects atelierA5 have completed this four-storey house in Tokyo enclosed by a perforated metal screen.

The SN. House is located on a narrow side street in a dense residential area of the city.

The first two storeys are screened by perforated metal sheets, which form the entrance hall and service corridor on the ground floor.

The roof of the service corridor creates a terrace for the first floor living space.

The top two floors are set back to adhere to local regulations and create terraces for each level.

More Japanese houses on Dezeen »

Photographs are by Ken’ichi Suzuki Photography Studio.

The following is from the architect:

SN. House by atelierA5

SN. House is located in a dense residential area in Tokyo. The building site is 80 m2 big facing to a narrow side street. To use a small site like this in an effective way it was important to consider the way of placing a building volume in the site. If the distance between the outside wall and the site boundary is narrow it produces an unusable gap. If the distance is wide enough the outside space can be useful but it reduces the inside space.

Our focus for the design was to create an optimal living condition and maximal usable areas within a small site by redefining the relation between the outside walls and the site boundary.

In order to keep the privacy for the ground floor and the 1st floor we encased the site with a two storey high screen on the site border instead of having a big distance to the neighbors and lose too much area.

This screen is made of punched metal sheets creating a semi-interior space by keeping a little distance to the actual building. The semi-interior space on the ground floor is used as an entrance hall and a service corridor covered with a steel-grating roof. The roof is the terrace of the 1st floor, which extends the space of the living room. The combination of the screen with the semi-interior space brings not only privacy but also filtered sunlight, wind and views. The outside walls of the 2nd and penthouse were set back, so that it created nice terraces for each floor and solved strict setback regulations at the same time.