Near House

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We are always on the look out for great modern home architecture (minimal homes). click on these links to see previous features  Watson House PENNARD HOUSE  Safe House  Aatrial House XTEN Openhouse  Brick House  Mini House  Keret House Villa Overby PLUS House Korora House

The site is located in a dense residential area in Tokyo where inhabitants are allotted only limited plots of land. A landowner sold the already limited land to two owners by dividing it. Quite small also irregular in shape, viewed from above it looks just like a vertically long flag and pole. Also the perimeter is long for its size, and the walls and the trees of the houses next-door stand very near. But they don’t give an oppressive feeling. Rather, the closeness of these houses look as if like they’re cuddling each other, which  creates some intimacy.

The site may be small, but when you change your point of view, its “nearness” can be a constructive advantage. Mount Fuji Architects Studio wanted to bring the very best out of it. The professional couple that bought the plot decided to divide the architecture into two small buildings and a court yard in between (*1). The buildings sit close to each other, the court yard seems more like a part of building connecting these two structures.

Each building has bonded wood (larch) post-and-beam placed at 450mm intervals. The narrowness of the land very much defines the  scale of their architecture. Near House is more furniture or product rather than architecture (*2). It interacts with people so closely. And that’s why they have the surfaces of bonded wood, softwood MDF and mortar finely textured like that of peach. Such delicate finish can only be possible thanks to the size, which would normally be considered as a disadvantage. Both these house structures have limited space, but their clever use of height and the slatted framework in their architecture definitely creates a sense of depth in different spheres.

By finding “nearness” in “smallness” and making the most of the space available, the house transcends the realm of architecture and takes a step into the world of product. And in that sense Near House can be considered as “Something near to being a house”. (Masahiro Harada) (*1: The areas that allow construction are the “flag” part, and the “grip” part of the “pole” that is originally designed as parking and has some more width than the “pole” itself.) (*2: Typical Japanese mini storage shelf is 450mm in width and 15mm in board thickness. Near House is almost like consisted of so many of this.) 

MOUNT FUJI ARCHITECTS STUDIO Akasaka heights 501, 9-5-26 Akasaka,Minato-ku,Tokyo 107-0052 / Photography Shigeo Ogawa