House N / Sou Fujimoto
Architects: Sou Fujimoto Architects
Location: Oita, Japan
Project Team: Yumiko Nogiri
Structural Consultant: Jun Sato Structural Engineers
Design Year: 2006-2007
Construction Year: 2007-2008
Site Area: 236,57 sqm
Constructed Area: 150,57 sqm
Photographer: Iwan Baan
A home for two plus a dog. The house itself is comprised of threeshells of progressive size nested inside one another. The outermostshell covers the entire premises, creating a covered, semi-indoorgarden. Second shell encloses a limited space inside the coveredoutdoor space. Third shell creates a smaller interior space. Residentsbuild their life inside this gradation of domain.
I have always had doubts about streets and houses being separated bya single wall, and wondered that a gradation of rich domain accompaniedby various senses of distance between streets and houses might be apossibility, such as: a place inside the house that is fairly near thestreet; a place that is a bit far from the street, and a place far offthe street, in secure privacy.
That is why life in this house resembles to living among the clouds.A distinct boundary is nowhere to be found, except for a gradual changein the domain. One might say that an ideal architecture is an outdoorspace that feels like the indoors and an indoor space that feels likethe outdoors. In a nested structure, the inside is invariably theoutside, and vice versa. My intention was to make an architecture thatis not about space nor about form, but simply about expressing theriches of what are `between` houses and streets.
Three nested shells eventually mean infinite nesting because thewhole world is made up of infinite nesting. And here are only three ofthem that are given barely visible shape. I imagined that the city andthe house are no different from one another in the essence, but arejust different approaches to a continuum of a single subject, ordifferent expressions of the same thing- an undulation of a primordialspace where humans dwell. This is a presentation of an ultimate housein which everything from the origins of the world to a specific houseis conceived together under a single method.
www.archdaily.com/7484/house-n-sou-fujimoto/