joto house renovation | ALTS DESIGN OFFICE

The property is in the old quarter where there are used-to-be-stores and shops along historic Tokaido road. The father of the owner also used to run tobacco shop there. The project this time is to replace such old building with a two household residence in which the parents’ household and child’s household can live together.
We considered how we could have both old building and new building coexist.

We then looked at the exterior structure of the house.
Fences and walls of the exterior structure are made to clearly separate the property and the road, and to protect the privacy.
We, then, devised creative solutions to loosely separate the road, exterior structure and the building, and loosely connect them at the same time.

The exterior structure of the building that resembles the fence and the wall gradually changes its volume from the border of the property to the building and eventually has functions to exist as a building.
By creating such space with fluidity, it will produce ambiguous spaces instead of separating the inside and outside completely, and those spaces will be give affluent feelings.
From the perspective of people who look at the architecture from outside, they would probably feel a strange senses that building is gradually blending into the outside.