Aluminum House is a renovation project for a young married couple and cats at the small office building in Yokohama, Japan.

They had just married and  wanted to live in heart of the city. Therefore, they decided to renovate the small office room to the SOHO (small office home office.)They required very simple but comfortable space, just like a hotel room.

I tried to change the aspect of the space only a little by putting some thin layers inside the existing walls. The L shaped aluminum channels are lined up and float a little from the existing ceiling. The small white boxes for the shelf are piled up within the existing window wall with a narrow gap.  The closets and kitchen are behind the narrow sliding doors within the existing partition wall.  And then, I tried to make an extremely thin layer with the spoon cut pine wood flooring. 

The room is faced north, so the sunshine hardly enters.  But, the light can slightly enter between the existing wall and the new thin layers, then it makes various expressions  of the space and the entire room is wrapped by the fragile aspects of the light.

I wanted to make such an architectural space like an inside of  lighting fixture.

 

 

 

Project data

 

location : Yokohama Kanagawa, Japan

principal use : house(renovation)

design period : 2008.03~2008.06

construction period : 2008.06~2008.08

architect : Hideki Yoshimatsu + archipro architects

project architect : Hideki Yoshimatsu, Michio Maeda

general contractor : shonan renovation

total floor area : 47.43 m2

publications : THE NIKKEI MAGAZINE 090419 / LiVES 0901 / Renovated Spaces: New Life for Old Homes