No Comments »

Japanese Family’s Privacy Salvaged in Challenging Site

• Tweet

• Tweet

The architect’s job here was clear: wrestle tranquility and privacy from an environment that has neither.

Like so much architecture in overcrowded Japan, the house in Shiga, Japan is in an unpromising site.

So ALTS Design Office hide a peaceful and private space within a blend-in ugly exterior.

The childrens’ high bedroom windows upstairs are seen in the parking lot, but no hint is given that that is what they are.

Anything less banal on the outside would pierce the privacy of the family hiding their home in clear site on a parking lot.

The boring wall to the parking lot is the key to the design.

To gain peace and privacy, the architects arranged an exclusive path extended in along the front of the house.

A skylight outside, behind the parking lot wall brings daylight but not rain to this briefest of exterior views.

“This way “we gave importance to design the outside space in inside space and produced diverse and interesting space,” say the architects.

The interior blends so seamlessly into the exterior that the ground floor doesn’t feel at all claustrophobic.

And once in the anonymous public realm, no hint is given that family life goes on inside.

The zen placement of the rocks is just perfect.

“We didn’t separate into inside and outside of house simply, and designed the outside space in inside space,” say the architects. “By doing so, we brought a feeling of strangeness in a good sense.”

Only in Japan could the zen sensibility of Japanese architecture work the magic needed!