| Design Concept: Small Large House
A woman attempted to build her own house. This house, an architectural action, itself is an insistence of lifestyle of a woman and a dog. This house is compact like a two-seater-convertible-car. Such car is actually little too tight and inconvenient, but it doesn’t really bother fun driving. Just like that, this house is designed to enjoy dwelling and life itself in/with it.
A small house actually has some conveniences and enjoyments due to its size. This house makes sense to aim to provide not only such positive side of a small house, but also “Feeling of The Space”. To feel the space, two open spaces are planned, one is a courtyard and another one is a garden. Feeling of the space meant in this house is not only determined by physical sizes and dimensions. It meant to feel size of nature, vast sky and the earth, and also relaxed feeling given by them. Laid back on the sofa, the courtyard and the garden bring not only landscapes spreading to eyes ahead, but also sounds and feel of wind passing through. Softly closing eyes, the space gives a feeling just like being right in the middle of a prairie. The feeling expands the space. That is the size of this house.
Actually physical size of this small house is barely limits of the size of body expansion capabilities. Therefore, it is possible to feel the whole house in all the five senses. Spaces all in recognizable ranges provide comfortable and secured feeling.
Even if the house needs to be widely opened to enlarge the space and to bring the nature into, the house cannot compromise on a security for a woman living alone. Opened space and secured space, those two seem conflicting demands. To solve the dilemma, we developed highly secured space only for a bedroom, and let other spaces widely open with ambiguity between inside and outside.
Bathroom and washroom are zoned as a detached room just like traditional old Japanese residential houses. It can be approached from ambiguous indoor/outdoor space, courtyard. Due to the existence of this ambiguous courtyard, a dog can freely move around the entire house with no borderline of inside and outside, while the owner is not at home. Probably the dog can feel and appreciate the ambiguity more than we, human being, can.
The strong intention and preparedness may be necessary for a woman to live independently and to enjoy her life alone. The material and texture of exterior wall represents such her strong intention. The small house is like our modest proposal for her lifestyle to live independently with it. |
