House in Kodaira by Suppose Design Office

Catherine Warmann | 1 June 2010 8 comments

Japanese architects Suppose Design Office have completed a house in Tokyo surrounded on one side by a tent.

Called House in Kodaira, the two-storey residence is surrounded by a small garden but overlooked by passers-by.

The tent structure covers a courtyard, providing a semi-outdoor area but maintaining privacy.

More about Suppose Design Office in our special category.

Photographs are by Toshiyuki Yano.

The following information is from the architects:

House in Kodaira

This is a residential project that has a unique garden at the front of the house. The building, located in a residential area in Kodaira-shi, Tokyo, was designed for 4 family members.

The site is located in a place where it is directly connected to the public street.

Because of the conditions, our theme was to create a house to open to the outside yet it could keep a private space.

There is a front yard at the dwelling. We were considering the garden to connect the outside and inside but also to separate them for keeping the personal environment.

To create the courtyard as a semi private zone, a tent structure was used for a partition to separate the two spaces.

The tent is covering the garden as if it was a roof, a wall and also a fence.

The structure creates the outside environment as a part of interior of the house.

Moreover, the sliding doors at the living room can be totally open to the front garden to engage the comfortable green space to the private rooms.

We hope the residence could create an environment for more communities with neighbors that we used to have before, and reminds people the new relationship between a city and buildings, buildings and people.