Portal for Japanese minimalist architecture

F-WHITE is an independent one-storied residence with a courtyard for a single family.

As this site could not be subdivided into the standard size for regular residence but 1.5 times larger with a narrow entrance, it had been unpopular and used as a parking lot for 30 years. The request from the client’s family was to build a new house with a sense of family unity and spaciousness in this place.

In order to make effective use of this larger site with a limited budget, we decided to build a one-story house with a large footprint and lower height, and locate a courtyard which can be a private outdoor space in the center of this site where the beautiful blue sky can be seen from. But if we had located it in the center, it would have divided this house into two spaces.

Our answer for these conditions was allocating the rectangular courtyard at an unusual oblique angle to outer walls rather than a right angle. Because by locating like that, spaces around the courtyard can have enough area to stay, and be chained each other at their corners without an aisle.

This arrangement strengthens the relation between spaces and creates unified feeling of the house. This solution also provides feeling of spaciousness when you are inside of the house, because this oblique angle makes the courtyard look like a box that happened to be thrown out on one very large internal space.

And in spite of the sense of unity and spaciousness, the space around the courtyard is not just a big absent space but specialized to each function with various levels of privacy. You can find new and different scenes whenever you turn the corners around the courtyard, though the plan itself is quite simple.

As described above, impressive design of F-WHITE is a clever answer for the uniqueness of the client, the site, and the courtyard style.

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