SN.house

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SN.house

Firm

Type

Residential › Private House

YEAR

2010

SIZE

10,000 sqft - 25,000 sqft

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.