SAKAE HOUSE
Hearth Architects
LEAD ARCHITECT
Yoshitaka Kuga
CATEGORY
Houses
LOCATION
Hikone, Japan
Text description provided by architect.
This project is a single-family house on a site, where a part of a tenement house was separated and demolished.
Therefore, the site is long and thin with a width of 7.5m and depth of 30m which is like ‘a bed for an eel’.
Usually, you advance a typical courtyard on a site like this, but this time we decided to make a floor plan with a front garden and a rear garden instead of a typical courtyard that separates the space because the surrounding environment is an open space.
Then we made an intermediate space (a rich empty space) which has an overflow light and a spot garden-like alleyway at the southern side for two gardens to connect.
While creating an externally closed space in consideration of privacy, we let in light and created a staging (changes felt by the five senses) in which the shade of light changes depending on the season and time of day, by installing skylights and high sidelights.
In addition, by designing the alleyways and semi-outdoor spaces as if we were designing a city or townscape rather than a house, we were able to create a rich space that makes the most of the intermediate areas (the various connections and depths between inside and outside) while maintaining functionality.
The lean and calm space, which is full of nature, will give an extraordinary feeling to the client’s everyday life.
