House in Ibara

This is a small house for a young couple in the country of Okayama. They left the apartment of the downtown where lived before, and pursued a new house in the natural rich farm village. They chose leading a life simple and modest in rich nature. It is a trial which aims at fusion to traditional farm village scenery and a modern life.

Although the Japanese traditional house is followed in respect of a simple life space,this house is considered as the space which develops the spatiality of the standardized Japanese traditional houseand has the more contrast of reliance opening-closing by using strict geometrical composition of modern architecture
This house consists of box-space and roof-space. There are two bedrooms and bathroom in box-space, and there is storage(23.5 square meters)in an underground story. In roof-space, there are the entrance,kitchen and living room.The living room continues with the nature through an outside terrace.

The ground floor is space like the one-room of 78.5 square meters. In order to articulate this small space more attractively, box-space and roof-space are connected carefully.

If the sliding door of a bedroom is opened, all the rooms serve as one room space, and two spaces are gently connected with the level difference reflecting a site slope.

The box-space sets so that the sunshine and the privacy from the outside may be interrupted, and roof-space is allotted in the direction which faces nature. A parking lot is buried in a site slope by a half ,located at the mountain side. Zelkova trees are planted in the yard so that sunbeams shining through branches of trees may be dropped on a house.


Text: Kazunori Fujimoto

Kazunori Fujimoto Architect & Associates