Concrete/Concrete Block House
Single family house on a free standing yet difficult site. The entire building was conceived as an interaction between the static geometry of concrete block and the more dynamic nature of cast-in-place concrete.
In the typical suburban landscape outside Tokyo, this house was built on a pedestal made by a retaining wall that has a surprisingly complex shape. The east side overlooks a forest that has a small creek between the site and the woods. The west side faces another uphill retaining wall on the opposite side of the street. These natural and man-made geographical elements make the condition of the site even more complex and also give a dimension of abstruseness to the spatial quality of the site. This “spatial abstruseness” determined the direction of the search for the compositional relationship between the two major elements in this house (i.e. reinforced concrete and concrete block.)
