Sunlight Chimney Effect
The site of this project is in the center of Tokyo Metropolitan City, and neighborhood with houses lined so close together. Area of the site is very small and also the street border on it is only 2.4-meter width. I have to say that the condition of this residensial environment is quite bad. The neighborly houses have widows, of course, but they cannot get sunlight, and the people can see in the houses each other. Therefore every house closes the cutain and turn on the electric lights even in the daytime.
I decided that I did not make windows on the exterior walls, I had to design window on the top of the building. The building has three stories, basement, first floor and second floor. I made a very big skylight, it is almost half of the roof area, and pursued the detail which the sunlight got through the basement from the top of the building. This is very small house, so I made a vertical light well by using the staircase instead of an independent well. The stairs are made by translucent steel mesh and some floors are made by tranparerant glass. So that, even in this condition, every space in this house could get plenty of natural sunlight. The sunlight which passeged through the glass, the expand metal and the louver shines in the living room, the bedroom, the study room, the bathroom, the basement studio finally.
The light from the skylight is the only reliance
Kazutoshi Imanaga
