TANK wanted to create a more spacious and flexible layout in the compact Japanese apartment, which was previously divided by a narrow corridor into various cramped rooms.

"I considered that the room should have flexibility and the tenant can arrange it as she likes," explains the designer.

The team began by making the bathroom much larger and inserting sliding doors on both sides, enabling an extra route between the bedroom and the hallway.

The narrow entrance hall is designed as a "Doma" - a traditional Japanese entranceway - with a bare concrete floor that contrasts with the raised wooden flooring of the living area.

An exposed larch frame extends out beneath a raw concrete ceiling, while vertical batons combine with plywood sheets to form a screen dividing the bedroom from the living area.

The bedroom and adjacent closet are doorless, with walls and ceilings designed to look deliberately incomplete.

"There are no doors for the bedroom or walk-in closet," explains TANK. "The walls and ceiling have an unfinished look, I leave it to the tenant's taste as to how to utilise these rooms."

A clear glass lampshade houses a bare bulb that descends from the ceiling in the bedroom, casting long shadows from the wooden frame.

Other projects we've featured by TANK on Dezeen include an apartment with floors and ceilings covered in the same boards and a Tokyo apartment with removable patches of carpet to be used as flip flops.

See more Japanese houses on Dezeen, or see our Pinterest board filled with Japanese residences.

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by TANK appeared first on Dezeen.

Adapting part of a three-storey house, Yasunari Tsukada planned the interior as a grid of partitioned rooms that maintain the same clarity as an open-plan residence.

"The client requested a home where he could feel the presence of his family throughout the building, while at the same time having the calm and relaxing sensation of being in a private room," explains the designer.

The mezzanine floor runs across the centre of the space, accessed by a metal staircase near the entrance. There are no walls around it, only balustrades, so residents can look down onto any of the surrounding rooms.

Large windows and doorways also open rooms out to one another. There are a few sliding doors, so some of the spaces can be made more private when necessary.

"Each space also contains two or more windows or openings, giving rise to a multilayered space with no sense of hierarchy within it," says Tsukada.

An existing glass-block wall that previously encased a stairwell gives a curved outline to a new living room, plus a single concrete wall is the backdrop for a television.

The ceiling of the residence follow the angle of the roof. Bare lightbulbs hang down from it on long cables, while others are mounted sideways onto the walls.

Japanese designer Yasunari Tsukada more recently completed a beauty salon in Osaka with a timber lattice stretching across one wall.

Other new Japanese residences include an apartment with a sunken circular living room and an opaque house balanced above a pet shop. See more architecture in Japan.

Photography is by Stirling Elmendorf.

Here's some more information from Yasunari Tsukada:

House in Takamatsu

Our client was initially inclined to build a new house. After much consideration, however, he decided to partly renovate his three-storey family house, and use it as a residence for a two-generation family.

The client requested a home where he could feel the presence of his family throughout the building, while at the same time having the calm and relaxing sensation of being in a private room. By enveloping each room with a sloping ceiling to make use of the existing building, we wondered if we could create an ambiguously defined space that would feel as if it had been partitioned, while still maintaining a sense of coherence and unity.

The components that make up each individual room are gate-like walls, which consist mainly of openings. The roof gradient and heights of the sash windows were determined in accordance with the original height of the living room, which was 2400mm. The heights of the walls also took their cue from this figure, and were set at 2400mm. Although it seems as if this height has been deployed with excessive frequency within the space, doing away with ceilings for the individual rooms while covering them with a single, sloping ceiling and installing windows at a number of positions along the walls allowed us to create a sort of landscape that presented a very different face to the familiar surroundings. Each space also contains two or more windows or openings, giving rise to a multilayered space with no sense of hierarchy within it.

The renovation process involves thinking about how we can devise new spaces while respecting a given set of conditions imposed by the existing building, as well as the client's requirements. The glass blocks from the large staircase and stairwell were transformed into a part of the living room and the reading space, while the innocuous reinforced concrete wall that originally supported the staircase was given a new lease of life as the wall that one notices most of all on a daily basis. For our client, this space helped to give things and objects new meanings, and became invested with new stories and narratives – a process that prompted him to rethink the possibilities of design through renovation.

Project Name: House in Takamatsu
Project Type: residence renovation
Location: Takamatsu-city, Kagawa, Japan
Completion: 2012 May
Design: Yasunari Tsukada design
Contractor: Shikoku Housing

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by Yasunari Tsukada appeared first on Dezeen.

The existing building was a typical Vietnamese "tube house", with a long, thin plan and few windows. AHL Architects Associates was tasked with reorganising the plan to make better use of space and to increase natural light and ventilation.

The architects began by relocating the staircase from the centre of the house to along one wall, then added a large skylight overhead. They also removed sections of the floor, creating the four-storey atrium and a series of indoor balconies.

"The staircase and corridors were designed not as a simple and boring path but as a continuous and sequential space which becomes a living space," explain the architects.

The wall running alongside the atrium is lined with white ceramic tiles, giving it a ridged texture, and all of the balustrades are glazed to let more light through.

Just in front of the staircase, the entrance to the house is set within a recessed driveway at the end of a ramped platform. Once inside, residents can walk through to a kitchen on the ground floor or head upstairs to a double-height living room on the floor above.

Bedrooms are located on the first, second and third floors, and the top storey also features a dedicated worship room and a roof terrace.

Another "tube house" we've previously featured on Dezeen is the four-storey Stacking Green house, which features a a vertical garden on its facade. See more Vietnamese architecture on Dezeen.

Photography is by Anh Duc Le.

Here's more from AHL Architects Associates:

4.5x20 House

This house was designed for a young family with one child and grandmother, located in Van Phu, a new urban area in Hanoi, Vietnam. The existing design is boring (like thousands of other houses in Vietnam): lost of natural lighting and ventilation; simple space with core (staircase and toilet) in the middle and two bedrooms at two sides. Client (young family) needs something different from the existing. They need their own house, their style. This situation requires a smart solution for traffic, thereby creating interesting solutions of space, daylight and natural ventilation.

Based on their requirements, the program is quite simple: garage (for 2 cars), kitchen on the 1st floor, bedroom (for grand mother) and living room on the 2nd floor, master bedrooms on the 3rd floor, small guest room, sky terrace and worship on the 4th floor... but they need the architects focus on the creation of public spaces.

With a simple strategy "traffic creates space and function", we started by changing the location of staircase. Unique and continuous spaces were proposed based on the new staircase. The staircase and corridors were designed not as a simple and boring path but as a continuous and sequential space which becomes a living space.

Along with identifying new locations for staircase, the voids are also determined for natural lighting and ventilation. An atrium in the middle of house was created to bring daylight to lobbies and all rooms without window to outside. In addition, that allows full connection between the four levels of the house vertically.

The central space is the biggest volume where a double height living room locates, is surrounded by opening staircase, autrium and big windows.

The restrained and limited material palette of white painted ceramic tiles, wood, and glass avoids unnecessary ornamentation in order movement through a variety of opening spaces.

Type of development: Renovation of typical tube-house
Dimension: 4.5x20
Location: Van Phu New Urban Area, Hanoi, Vietnam
Status: Finished
Cost: 112,000 usd
Date: 2012

Architects: AHL architects associates
Architects in charge: Hung Dao, Tuan Anh Mai, Son Chu, Hieu Hoang, Nghia Mai, Tung Nguyen, Truc Anh Nguyen

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AHL Architects Associates appeared first on Dezeen.

The apartment hadn't been renovated since its construction and contained three traditional Japanese rooms lined with tatami mats. The renovation by nano Architects retains just one of these spaces, while the remaining two are converted into a split-level room with the sunken circle at its centre.

"The design concept is for the coexistence of two styles of different eras," said studio principal Yasuhiro Shinano. "I believe that the use of a Japanese-style room transplanted with a new design can be given a new value."

The architect installed a wooden platform around the edge of the room to create the central hollow, which has a contrasting concrete floor. Acid yellow panels wind like ribbons around the floor and ceiling, while a string curtain forms a see-through partition in between.

Four spherical pendant lights are suspended within the room, connected to a grid of cables that snake across the ceiling.

Other Japanese apartments featured on Dezeen include one where a wooden plank extends through three rooms and one where the floor was laid using timber from the ceiling. See more architecture in Japan.

Photography is by Yasunori Hidaka.

Read on for a project description from Yasuhiro Shinano:

The Times Transplantation Building

Abstract

Sanno apartment was completed in 1967. Since 1967, this room has not been renovated. This room has been renovated only after 45 years.

This room, which was completed in 1967, is a Japanese style. Re-sectioning part of the Japanese-style room, I transplanted the new style in 2012. The design concept is for the coexistence of two styles of different eras. My intention is to make the birth of the room with a new value. I believe that the use of a Japanese-style room transplanted with a new design can be given a new value.

The Times Transplantation

Loss of value of the space left behind the times. Cutting off a part of it and removed, transplanted and compound a different times there. This seems to like a surgical operation, but it is also like a plastic operation. These are classified by 3 parts of lifeline that is, first, "a drainage pipe, a service pipe, and a gas pipe" as vein, and "electric wire" as nerve, at last, that is "oil supply machines" as internal organs. To displace the broken lifeline and transplant new items.

Space left behind the times in 1967. Cutting an incision in the part of the interior that make up the surface like the skin. The same way as the fresh air is brought through the open door, the world of 2012 is transplanted into the world of 1967. It seemed as if value was lost in 1967 by remix of design effect that different times stand in line, new values like a new story were produced. Paralleling of the world of 1967 and 2012, different times and design are born as combination of different times of the space.

Architects: nano Architects
Location: Fukuoka, Japan
Designer: Yasuhiro Shinano
Area: 48 sqm
Year: 2012

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by nano Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

The residents of the Amsterdam apartment already owned a cabinet from Bo Reudler's Slow White collection, a range of furniture made from tree branches, and asked the designer to style the room around it.

Reudler designed six pairs of shutters to reduce glare from the small square windows, as well as to provide more privacy from the neighbours.

Taking six irregularly shaped planks from a yew tree, the designer used a mix-and-match technique to create each of the panels. Rather than blocking out the light completely, every panel has a crack allows slivers of light to pass through.

Knots in the wood created holes in the planks and are positioned in place of handles.

A table and compass from the Slow White collection were added to the room to complement the cabinet and shutters, alongside the designer's Bamboo Windsor high-back chair, a candle holder from the Haute Bamboo collection and Equus rug, a horse hide with a cutaway Fleur-de-Lis pattern.

See more design by Bo Reudler Studio on Dezeen, including children's furniture shown at Dutch Design Week 2011.

Photography is by Raoul Kramer.

Here's a project description from Bo Reudler Studio:

New Amsterdam interior by Bo Reudler Studio

'There is a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in.' (Leonard Cohen)

For a living room interior in an Amsterdam apartment, Bo Reudler Studio designed six Slow White shutters. The high volume of the space was over flooded with light from six small west-facing windows. The brief called for something to block out glare and at the same time provide privacy from neighbours. The clients already owned a Slow White Cabinet. With this in mind they wondered if the cabinet doors could be translated into something larger: this led to the Slow White shutters.

Using wood as the starting point the aim was not to completely shut out the light but create an interaction with it. By utilising the natural outlines and openings in the wood, each shutter celebrates the material and interacts with the light in a different way. Six planks were selected from a Yew tree native to Western Europe, renowned for its irregular-shaped trunk that produces whimsically shaped planks. The curving natural lines of the planks were mapped like a puzzle to create six pairs of shutters each with their own character. The holes of the knots were positioned as grips for opening and closing. Cracks in the shutters, which are also visible from the exterior, slice the light and admit glimpses of the outside while closed. The shutters bring to the forefront a forgotten building element that was once a common fixture in many homes of the past.

The space is furnished with pieces from the studio including the Slow White table and Golden Compass that highlight the distinguishing curves of natural branches, the Haute Bamboo candleholder and Bamboo Windsor chair, a classic Western chair reinterpreted using the inherent qualities of bamboo and rattan. Resembling oversized lace with its graphic fleur-de-lys pattern cut into the horse hide, the Equus rug initiates an interaction with the floor to either hide it or reveal what's underneath.

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by Bo Reudler Studio appeared first on Dezeen.