Horizontal Void House
On my first visit to the site, a vivid imagery of the building popped into my mind. It seems that at that moment I knew what should be done, rather than actual plans or forms. In a suburban residential area developed some twenty years ago, the site occupies a corner of a block with housing plots of identical size lined in row. This lot sat there somewhat isolated from the rest, like a slit amid a rhythmical pattern of houses. Adjacent to neighboring houses thus closed on north and south, the narrow, rectangular site opens to the streets on both eastern and weatern sides.
My rather simple concept involved a tube lying east to west: a horizontal well. In terms of function, structure and design, I tried to focus on how they may be exploited and emphasized. Two living rooms were prepared to serve the lives of the couple and their two children: a family living room and a childrens living room. The two rooms are separated on first and second floors, yet connected through the horizontal well so that each party can feel the others presence. The structure consists of 25 thin wooden boards 180mm wide and 33mm thick aligned at 450mm pitch, and four reinforced steel bars connecting these ultra-thin wooden boards for structural strength. These dainty wooden boards placed evenly spaced apart are colored red brown with oil stain, for an expression of robust presence in contrast to the inorganic, all-white interior. The entire structural is covered with composition boards of opal polycarbonate and glass, so that the two living rooms are enveloped in soft light from south. The neighboring houses silhouette casts shadows on the polycarbonate boards that change over time, a sight one never tires of.
Kazutoshi Imanaga
