Seashore Shell House

Takeshi Hirobe Architects

ARCHITECTS
Takeshi Hirobe Architects

AREA
73.03 m2

YEAR
2008

LOCATION
Chiba, Japan

CATEGORY
Residential Architecture

Text description provided by architect.

Situated on a populated bathing beach, the site is surrounded by neighboring houses on three directions.

It was a natural decision to open up the house towards the sea.

We decided to go with the idea of obstructing the disturbing view and framing the beautiful view towards the sea and the sky at the same time.

We experimented with various types of courtyard style structure in order to find a way to frame the sea and the sky.

And we eventually came up with this shelter-like structure.

It is composed of a sequence of structural members that wraps around the void space in middle, without any wall or roof.

From this structure we created a spatial image of a person wandering into a seashell.

Seashore Shell House is a timber shell structure featuring the curvilinear rhythmic sequence of pleat-like structural members.