House in Musashikoyama
Back to Projects list- Location
- Tokyo, Japan
- Year
- 2009
This house is located in a high-density residential area. The client manages a food company and owns a factory adjoining the house. The most important condition in designing the house was that the ground floor be a parking are for large and small trucks ownedy by the factory.
The size of the parking area determined the overall form of the building, because building codes regulate exterior form based on a diagonal line drawn from the foot of the building upwards. The step-shaped form followed naturally from those limitations. The facade of each level is divided into two sections, a lower waist-heigh section of black galvanized steel and a upper window section. The alternating belts of black steel and glass windows repeat on each level.
In order to emphasize the difference between floors, a different interior finishing material is used on each. This also gives a sense of the vertical progression of the structure.
The lower half of the outer wall of each floor (the steel portion) is used as storage space. Not only is the exterior of the building made of high-performance insulating material, but when these closets are full they add even more insulating capacity to the structure.
The upper section of each level alternates between sliding windows for ventilation and fixed windows for light. Both types of window are double-glazed for insulation. A additional layer is installed inside the fixed windows, creating four air spaces and further preventing heat loss. Because of these architectural details, the interior of the house has bright natural light without high heat loss, despite being located in a high-density area closely surrounded by other houses.
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