This minimal family house designed by FORM/Kouichi Kimura Architects is built on a wedge of land in Shiga, Japan.
The client has requested to make the best use of the characteristic site form to build a house with both privacy protection and a sense of openness in the house.
The building is composed of the echelon volume successive along the site form, and the high wall. The landscape-oriented façade, which is one of the external features and brought about by making good use of the site width, allows people’s line of sight to be introduced in the horizontal direction.
The interior space design also takes advantage of the site width. On the first floor the entrance hall is located at the center. On its both ends are the spot gardens that are allocated in the spaces separated by the Japanese room on the irregular site form. As the line of sight is designed to be as long as possible, the internal space is visually expanded so as to realize the space that gives an open feeling.
On the second floor the living room and the balcony are laid out on both ends. In addition, the ceiling of the living room is designed to be higher than that of the other rooms. These designs intensify visual expansion. The opening at the upper side of the living room, as well as the glass wall on the balcony where a bench is furnished, is one of the elements that produce a sense of openness.
By considering the site form to select the locations for the openings and control the line of sight, this house realizes the spaces that give a sense of openness but are closed off to the periphery.
