tokyo-based practice sou fujimoto architects has completed ‚house NA‘, a single family dwelling within a residential district in tokyo, japan. similar in form to a stacked pile of boxes the internal areas generated by the exterior appearance are set at different elevations. the small rooms within each platform are connected by ladder stairs allowing a free movement through the home’s loosely defined program.
the rectangular windows of varied proportions and sizes frame views of adjacent structures while the elimination of solid interior walls encourage unobstructed sight lines to higher and lower spaces. at night, curtains become temporary partitions for privacy and separation.
source:
designboom.com/sou-fujimoto-house-na
Described as ”a unity of separation and coherence”, the house acts as both a single room and a collection of rooms. The loosely defined program and the individual floor plates create a setting for a range of activities that can take place at different scales. The house provides spaces of intimacy if two individuals choose to be close, while also accommodating for a group of guests by distributing people across the house.
source:
archdaily.com/house-na-sou-fujimoto-architects
To dwell in a house, amongst the dense urbanity of small houses and structures can be associated to living within a tree. Tree has many branches, all being a setting for a place, and a source of activities of diverse scales.
By stratifying floor plates almost furniture-like in scale, throughout the space, this house proposes living quarters orchestrated by its spatio-temporal relativity with one another, akin to a tree. The house can be considered a large single-room, and, if each floor is understood as rooms, it can equally be said that the house is a mansion of multifarious rooms. A unity of separation and coherence.
Yet the life lived and the moments experienced in this space is a contemporary adaptation of the richness once experienced by the ancient predecessors from the time when they inhabited trees. Such is an existence between city, architecture, furniture and the body, and is equally between nature and artificiality.
source:
dezeen.com/house-na-by-sou-fujimoto-architects
