An umbrella-shaped site encourages a diverse topography within the house.

‘This two-storey residence with a wooden structure is located in a town an hour‘s drive from Fukuoka city, in the southern part of Japan. The family aimed to get various places on a site which has a shape of an umbrella or an arrow. We proposed to create a diverse topography in the house with each space facing the surroundings equally.
At the beginning of this project we were looking for a site to build the house. Then, the client found a site which had a shape of 100m2 triangle with 3m wide and 30m long frontage road. The shape of the site resembled an umbrella or an arrow. When we had our first site visit, a lot of neighbors came out and gave us information about the site. The information from the neighbors was a wide range of topics, for instance, there are good neighbors around there and all the houses around the site are elevated about 60cm from front road because the road was flooded few times by heavy rains stroke the site occasionally. The client told us that they do not need Living room and dining is in center of the family, and each one of the family spend their time separately but feels signs each other. So the client wished to get diversity of places in the site. As a result, the house is facing towards every neighbor equally, and dining room is located in center of the house which can be seen from every room.’

ARCHITECT: rhythmdesign, Fukuoka, Japan. LOCATION: Rakuichi, IIzuka city, Fukuoka pref., Japan. DESCRIPTION: Rakuichi, IIzuka city, Fukuoka pref., Japan. STATUS: completed. AREA: 104.87 sqm. PROJECT ARCHITECT: Kenichiro Ide Design. PROJECT TEAM: Kenichiro Ide, Mariko Shimada. STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS: Kuroiwa Structural Engineers. MAIN CONTRACTOR: Ikohouse corporation. FURNITURE: E&Y CO.,LTD. SUPPORT: FORZA. DATE: 2011. No part of this web site may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of Morfae and the copyright owner.