interior house cement wood
interior house cement wood

The present as a neutral moment suspended between the past and future. Evocative architecture in a house in Zenpukuji

The opportunity to design and inhabit one's own home is a precious opportunity for artists to experiment with unconventional and often poetic ways of living. This is the case of the House in Zenpukuji, a residential district in the hills of Tokyo, belonging to the designer couple of aoyagi design studio that was designed for themselves and their children

The steep morphology of the land on which it stands together with the only possibility of opening to the east, shape the external form of this architecture and ideally influence its interior. A sort of tower that absorbs and transforms in its essence the influence of the eastern exposure: symbolically the east represents the lively and spontaneous energy of the new and vitality of nature; as for a plant, what counts is to lean towards life and light

dining area night

Thus the house like a tree manifests its vital potential even more convincingly thanks to the contrast with a site that dictates rigid external design conditions: it rises to the sky, but also sinks its roots into the ground with its 4 floors, two of which are underground and two external; it turns to the precious source of light to the east that by entering inside, creates the creative and unusual flow with which the housing functions unfold

dining area night

Through a "crack" you can enter the house from the middle floor and find yourself suspended evocatively between the bottom and the top; the designers talk about the flow that permeates and involves the inhabitants: there is no rigid structure and no clear division of the rooms in their architecture; a void that hosts the staircase connecting the floors makes it possible to notice the suspended volumes and apparent "inconsistencies" of the design criteria adopted due to the long creative processes

dining area night

This architectural flow within the house creatively meets the design parameters of the organization of functions and the relationship with the outside world, and at the same time gives the individuals who live there a poetic view of living: "This suspended view offers the family the possibility to embrace not only the past and the present, but also the future with the same neutrality".

dining area night

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