Fumiko Takahama Architects has recently completed a house in a residential area of Oiso, a town located in Japan’s Kanagawa prefecture, with a transparent roof canopy, which shelters an outdoor area that serves as an extension of the interior. The ‘Giant house in Oiso’ has been designed for a young couple who asked the architect for ‘one big space except for a small bedroom’.
Fumiko Takahama and her team designed the house as a slender volume that extends to the rear of the plot. This linear layout increases the apparent scale of the property, one of the project’s key themes.
When you enter inside and look right from a bit closed and dim entrance, you find bright main living space which ceiling height is over 5m at the end of the corridor. On the opposite side, when you go up to the stairs, there is the master bedroom at an intermediate level, then the study/guest room in which the dynamic wood framework of the roof in front of the view. When you look down the living room over the second floor which has pitched low ceiling like a loft, the contrast makes you feel the bigness and generosity of the air volume of this main space even more.
Consisting of H-shaped steel columns, laminated pine wood beams, and polycarbonate panels, the roof canopy ensures that natural light is able to make its way inside the home. For the interior, the studio selected light gray finish and materials in order that people may perceive its geometry abstract and gradational light coming in from outside.
“Often people say that the bigger the space, the richer the space,” explains Fumiko Takahama. “If the project is in the center of a metropolitan, it may be the status to have a big room in terms of area. But in the case a big site is already out there, we thought just to make a big room in the middle of the site isn’t enough to feel the bigness and the richness.”
