Komazawa Park House

Two weeks ago, I visited a house called "Komazawa Park House" designed by Mrs. Imamura and Mr. Shinohara.The house was not a newly constructed but a reconstruction.  However,  I felt they dramatically changed the original house. They added a new idea and structure into this house.



The original house was a two storey wooden house with a small garden. Surprisingly, architects divided the original house in two equal parts. In addition, they add a small two storey structure in the garden. There are now three small structures all together.

I think one of the most important aspects of this house were the jointing parts between each of the three structures. Architects designed the jointing parts as a slit covered with glass.  Mr Imamura said that "I tried to put  real soil and real plants on the jointing parts floor. But Mrs. Imamura was against that, because it may have moths in it." Looking from the outside, the house doesn't look like one whole house, but rather three small structures.

Looking into the interrior, they took off the second floor of the center part and made one big room with open ceiling space and a ceiling light.  They treated the center part as a garden and created a very cozy space. In this house people can easily communicate from anywhere through the inner garden space.

Mr. Shinohara showed us  a very interesting slide about the concept of the house. 

There are many different  kinds of forms and walls in the residental district. It is very hard to find unity among the buildings. But if you think about the structures in the slide, the townscape is dramatically changed and there is some kind of unity. This is because every house was made by the same scaled wooden columns and beams. Mr.Shinohara said that "Because of chang the image of residental district in this way, we could think about the house's design more freely. We started designing the house not from surface level but from the structural level. "  I guess they found the hidden unity and tried to enhance that. 

 
The house  was  bright and  cozy.  The architects  had nice  and  happy  personalities and I felt they kept a good relationship. They created good  harmony with the space. We received a  short lexture from Mr. Shinohara when we  visited the house. During the lecture, the most serious student was Mrs. Imamura. I'm looking forward to their next project.