A Japanese Home Designed For Closeness

In Toyota, Japan, Katsutoshi Sasaki and Associates has designed a black-wash wooden house whose narrow width serves to bring those living inside closer together.

Designed in a rational but unrestricted way, the ‘T House‘ is arranged across platforms allowing people to share space even whilst in separate rooms. The platforms allow full use of the height of the building, and for light to illuminate the various layers. The proportions of the house were deliberate, the architects explaining that they let the use of the property inform its dimensions. As such, the width is designed from a human perspective, and the height is designed from a landscape perspective. The narrowness of the home is to allow an “embracing comfort”, whilst the eight-meter ceilings refer to the streetscape of the premise. The levels of the house that stretch across this height are laid out in a whorled manner; the spiral staircase shifting at points to enter different platforms—each designed with a different purpose, as bedrooms, offices, a gallery space, and a market area.