The three-storey residence is located on a small corner plot within the suburban town of Honjyo. The building follows the irregular outline of the site, but is set back on one side to leave enough space for a car parking area.

The stripy metal cladding covers the entire exterior, wrapping over the roof and across the front door.

Behind the cladding, the house has a simple timber frame. Criss-crossing beams are revealed on the ceiling over the ground floor, but the structure is concealed elsewhere inside the house.

The architects added tall narrow windows to three elevations. The first and second floors are set back from the windows, creating triangular lightwells that let daylight through the building.

A steel staircase with timber treads extends up through the centre of the house, acting as an informal screen between rooms. On the ground floor it separates the living room from the kitchen, while on the first floor it splits the largest of two bedrooms into a sleeping area and study.

The uppermost floor contains a second living room, which opens out to the rooftop terrace.

This isn't the first time Japanese studios SNARK and OUVI have teamed up on a project. The pair previously collaborated on a pair of apartment blocks that look like clusters of houses.

See more houses in Japan, including a house with two trees inside it.

Photography is by Ippei Shinzawa.

Here's a project description from SNARK:

House in Keyaki

Honjyo-shi is a small area located in Saitama Prefecture. It is an hour and a half by car from Tokyo, Japan. Almost all residents here always use their own cars when they go somewhere because there is no available public transportation like trains and buses. This means that we need to consider providing parking spaces when building new houses within this area.

First, when we thought the outline of this house, we allotted the proper setbacks within the site. From this, we came up with a car parking space and a small garden. At the same time, we could get enough sunlight from every directions.

Second, we designed three narrow windows on the south, east and west side of the house. Then we designed triangle voids in front of these windows on the second floor.

These voids provided visual connections to the outside and inside of the house. And people inside this house can anticipate the presence of each other within different spaces or rooms. You could feel how the sunlight changes anytime as well as the changes in season.

Finally, we set some furniture on the border of the triangle voids and each places. The inner space of this architecture is divided into smaller spaces and it can be adjusted depending on the resident's preference.

Architects: Sunao Koase / SNARK (Sunao Koase, Yu Yamada) + Shin Yokoo / OUVI
Structural engineer: Shin Yokoo / OUVI
General constructors: Yasumatsu Takken

Location: Honjyo city, Saitama, Japan
Site area: 132.24 sqm
Built area: 55.54 sqm
Floor area: 103.13 sqm
Number of floors: 2
Structure: wood

Design: 2011.4-2012.3
Construction: 2012.3-2012.7

Above: ground floor plan - click for larger image

Above: first floor plan - click for larger image

Above: second floor plan - click for larger image

Above: cross section one - click for larger image

Above: cross section two - click for larger image

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and OUVI appeared first on Dezeen.

The sixteen apartments have identical layouts in plan, yet every one has a differently shaped elevation that has been designed to create the best lighting and views for each precise location.

This means room heights, window positions and roof pitches vary for both blocks, while some of the top floor residences feature suspended ceilings that zigzag up and down.

Both buildings are entirely clad in light blue coated steel and all sixteen apartments have minimal white interiors.

See more architecture and interiors from Japan here.

Photography is by Ippei Shinzawa.

Here's some more text from the architects:

Ridge

About the concept of an apartment that was built in Takasaki city, Gunma.

Gunma is the car society and, a car ownership rate per person of Gunma is the highest in Japan.

The transportation by car expands a sphere of life, and this is special locality of Gunma.

Usually, a context of creating architectures is quoted from a neighborhood and small area where we can go on foot.

However, I quote a context from a wider range in this case and, design it by a macro scale of the scenery.

Plan of every dwelling unit is almost the same but section is not same at all.

I designed the section of every dwelling unit carefully from the every situation - position of the room, line of sight from a peripheral road, and roof shape.

As a result, shape of windows and undulation of ceilings is each different.

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and OUVI appeared first on Dezeen.

Japanese architects Masaki Mori of Morii's Atelier and Shin Yokoo of OUVI have completed a house in Kanagawa, Japan, for a couple who plan to retire soon.

Called M-house, the residence is organised around a kitchen garden.

Large windows frame views of the surrounding cedar trees.

More stories about OUVI:

House in Mitaka by Hidetaka Shirako and OUVI
Andon by Grasses and OUVI

Photographs are by Takeshi Yamagishi.

Here's some more information from Morii's Atelier:

--

It is a house for the married couple who will retire soon and for their family. The couple hope to be able to feel the nature through the garden work and the kitchen garden in their life afterwards.

It seems as the theory to build the mountain villa with a span roof and natural material on the site like the villa area surrounding by green. If it is a country house, such a pastoral image might be sometimes necessary.

However, I don't think that it is always necessary for their life in the future. I dared to choose the ordinary material which is treated easily seen well in the residential quarter, such as alminium sash with the louver door of ready-made goods for a flat roof and the siding board.

It is because of expecting a generic space that excludes the originality of employed material and the uniqueness of the design, and to make a consciousness not only to internally, but also to externally. When I had visited the sites several times, I found that the scenery that looked like the panorama till then suddely changed.

The broad leaves trempled in the breez, the wood of Japanese cedar like drawing by a ruler, the bank which reflects sunshine, and the blue sky without any cloud. Those various scenes were suddenly cut back in the head. Then, I realised that the only one possibility to construct something here was to break up this scenery and to customize for their life.

Towering cloud reflecting in the window. Foggy mountains of background, the sunlight through dim wood of Japanese cedar. Small flowering plant in a bank and a cabbage butterfly flying around them. A tit coming to pick some insects in the lawn. The all are trimmed with the frame in the window, and it is constructed as the new scenery.

The expression which was not noticed before appears, we are healed and are sharpened our feelings. This building is a kind of module that updates the previous scenery, and could be a software that won't function by itself. In nature, there are some enjoyments, which is to observe by a telescope, to look into by a microscope, and to adjust the magnification between them. It awakes with small bird's twittering in the morning, and eyes catch the wild bird coming to pick up the insect.

Looking the herb planted outside from the kitchen, and enjoying a meal with the familiy having the conversation of the flower blooming in the bank. Taking a nap sitting on a sofa while looking at mountains in the distance, and falling asleep hearing the sound of insects at night. It is exactly the life that you can feel nature around you. The heat, the cold, rainny day and the windy day.

If we can make things return to parallel again, the new world might come into a view in this field.

project: m-house
Photo : (C) Takeshi Yamagishi
Location : Kanagawa, Japan

Architect: Morii's Atelier x OUVI

Credits:

Morii's Atelier
Masaki Mori

OUVI
Shin Yokoo

Text by Masaki Mori

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Japanese architects Hidetaka Shirako and Shin Yokoo of OUVI have completed a low, gabled house in Tokyo, Japan.

The house is mostly on one level and was designed for a couple living with one partner's elderly mother, a wheelchair user.

Sliding doors between rooms retract into the walls.

These openings align with windows in each end, creating a clear view through the length of the building when open.

See Andon house by OUVI and Grasses in our previous story.

Photographs are by Hiroshi Ueda.

Here's some text from Shin Yokoo

--

This is a two-family house, in which a couple and their elderly mother in a wheelchair live, located in the residential area a little far from Mitaka station.

From the beginning of this project, we would like to create the space where the residence live comfortably with moderate distance from each other.The outward appearance of this house is the low eaves, and a bulky one-storied house, whose gable roof stretched upward, as it is drawn by a tall apartment standing next to the house. In addition, we put as much flat floor as possible in this site.

In the large one-room space arranged like that, we set up a column for supporting its roof and two wind-resistant knees, crossed each other, like a trunk of a tree. We call it "Knee Brace". From this, we divided each room equally by putting wall in a grid form. Each room is independent but also connects to all directions by putting doors on one side closing to another room, and putting windows on the side closing outside.

If all the doors are opened by put them into the walls, openings last long and residents feel the depth of the room is extended, as if the situation when two mirrors are put in face to face.

It is a moment that a diagram of one-room which divided in equal space, this shift to expanded space that can be seen various scenes of life.

Project name : House in Mitaka
Location : Tokyo, Japan
Architect : HIDETAKA SHIRAKO ARCHITECTS + OUVI

HIDETAKA SHIRAKO ARCHITECTS
Hidetaka Shirako

OUVI
Shin Yokoo

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