House in Sonobe / Tato Architects

• 00:00 - 27 March, 2019

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House in Sonobe / Tato Architects

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Exterior view from Southwest. The large siding door of the Sunroom is opened
 + 36

Architects
Tato Architects

Location
Nantan, Japan

Category
Houses

Lead Architect
Yo Shimada

Design Team
Yo Shimada, Yasue Imai

Area
84.59 m2

Project Year
2017

Photographs
Shinkenchiku Sha, Yohei Sasakura

MORE SPECS

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 Exterior view from West. The large siding door of the Sunroom is opened.

Text description provided by the architects. This house stands in a new residential district in the
mountains, which was put up for sale in the 1990s. The region has a slightly cool and wet climate, when
looking at the other houses in the vicinity; you can see that many of them feature lean-to-sheds,
designed as small sunrooms, made by enclosing a back entrance or veranda with corrugated
polycarbonate panels. These so-called ‘terrace enclosures’ are often used as storehouses in winter, or as
places for drying laundry – a clever feature, that we realized represents, a certain style shared among
the various new mass-produced houses of this residential district.

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 Overlooking the Sunroom. Large sliding doors closed

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 View towards the Dining and Living room, from the Kitchen

We used these terrace enclosures as inspiration for the materials and functions of our sunroom. We also
incorporated a wide-eaved terrace and other semi-outdoor spaces into the interior of the house. Our
expectation was that these would act as interfaces between the surrounding environments.

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 Sunroom. View towards Entrance

Regarding the volume of the house, we used a simple square grid and its diagonals to create the
different spaces such as one that is intimately sized, and another containing a spacious void. To each of
these, we attached semi-outdoor spaces.
The wall of the sunroom is made from a large hanging door that can slide open to turn the sunroom into
an outdoor area, or enclose the second floor space under the eaves.
On the south side of the site, we followed the example of the neighborhoods lean-to sheds and created
an alcove and storage space.

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 Sunroom. View towards Dining area

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 © Shinkenchiku Sha

Around the house, centered on the site, we piled up the earth left over from the foundation work in an
attempt to reclaim the original slope that existed before the site was developed into tiered platforms for
residential development. This reclaimed mound of earth will be covered in grass, and with time, the
owners will make it into a garden.

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 Exterior view from Northeast

The interior is finished using Moiss, a material that catches light and regulates humidity. Glass inserted
at the boundaries reflects and permeates the light, like facets of a crystal. This house embodies a variety
of interior scenery intermixed with landscapes from near and far.