Small House with Big Spiral Staircase by Avehideshi Architects

3 August 2010

Japanese firm Avehideshi Architects and Associates have completed this house in Osaka, Japan, with a staircase that wraps around the house's internal perimeter.

The Small House with Big Spiral Staircase has windows carefully placed and sized to capture views of the scenery beyond the adjacent train track and car park.

The staircase has been placed so that the most favourable views are enjoyed as one ascends through the house and connects three stacked boxes that divide up the internal space.

The house is on 60 square-metre site and has a studio on the ground floor, bedroom and bathroom on the first floor, and living and dining room on the second.

Here's some more from the architects:

Small house with big spiral staircase

This small residence is in the suburbs of Osaka on a mere 60sqm.

It is composed of an atelier for the flower arrangement on the first floor, the bedroom and bathroom on the second floor, and the living dining rooms on the third floor.

The site is surrounded by tracks and passing trains, a truck stop parking lot, and neighboring homes drawing close to the property line.

At first glance, noise, exhaust, and lines of sight make this place hard to describe as an advantageous living environment.

The theme of this residence was accepting such environs and finding a solution that makes the best of them.

Another good look at site's surroundings shows a favorable environment extending over the top of the parking lot and neighboring houses, out of the field of vision.

The atelier, which can signal what it has inside and has visitors even on the often avoided train track side, can be read spatially as a mixture of favorable and unfavorable aspects, depending on the height and orientation of the surroundings.

In that vein, in rooms that look out on favorable areas, the staircase is positioned spatially in parts that do not.

The spiral staircase and the 3 stacked boxes are complementary.

A new awareness of the surrounding exterior scenery is created as the outside appears and disappears depending on the angle from the opening in each room facing the staircase.

The spiral staircase, developed as if to wrap the building, though attached independently at each level, builds a new relationship with the city, a small house achieving a large expanse.