House in Shimogamo | Tomohiro Hata Architect & Associates

This is a plan for a house in Shimogamo, Kyoto. The site is located to the west of the Kamo River, with views of Mount Hiei to the east. The surrounding area is a mixture of traditional townhouses and relatively spacious mansions surrounded by walls and hedges, and in recent years the area is being rebuilt with three-story buildings due to the need for efficient land use. This project was also based on the premise of responding to the high level of land use and the landscape with a long history that is being renewed.

I was deeply impressed by the landscape of this place, where roofs of various ages and sizes overlapped each other and blended into the mountainous landscape in the background, in an environment where townhouses, mansions and modern buildings are mixed, together.

Therefore, I wanted to find a way for the architecture to connect to and amplify this diverse landscape of overlapping roofs. It is not a volume stacked under a large roof, but a collection of small roofs. The volume, which is growing due to the high use of land, is loosened by the division of several roofs, and blended into the town. Under each roof, a unique space is created, and at the same time, the relationship between them appears.

Specifically, on the first floor, a tea ceremony room, a children's room, and “doma”, earthen floor, facing the street are arranged with their own roofs, and the tea ceremony room is connected to the terrace on the second floor, while the children's room and doma are connected to the dining room and terrace, and so on. On the second and third floors, the dining room, living room, terrace, and the observation room on the top floor are all connected to each other through the roofs, allowing light and wind to flow in, expanding the air volume, and creating a grain of living space that can be spent individually, or as a whole.

In this way, the grains of space characterized by the roof collide, melt, and overlap with each other, aiming to create a residence with a variety of places to live and a comfortable relationship between them.

Credits
Architecture Firm: Tomohiro Hata Architect & Associates

Lead Architects:  Tomohiro Hata, Misato, Takagi

Photography: Toshiyuki Yano, http://www.yanofoto.com/