Arched doorways and shuttered windows give this Japanese residence by Takushu Arai the appearance of an oversized playhouse .
Arai designed the House in Tama-plaza as a house for himself and his family in a densely populated area of Yokohama – a city located south of Tokyo in Kanagawa Prefecture.
The 6-metre-wide home is shoehorned into a narrow plot amongst a pair of existing residences and two streets. In buy to offer a parking room towards the front of the home and a small garden to the rear, the architect set the building back from the streets in the centre of the plot.
The property is conceived as 4 overlapping volumes, every containing a separate function. It has a timber framework, covered externally in sheets of white Galvalume – a kind of steel sheet coated with an aluminium and zinc alloy.
These sheets characteristic various finishes, with the two vertical and horizontal stripes, helping to highlight various blocks.
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Dark hexagonal tiles pave a pathway that leads from the street to the arched front door of the house. Inside of, arched doorways and inner windows with curving tops or bottoms continue this detail.
A triple-height atrium that runs by way of the core is overlooked by a pair of balconies and small shuttered windows that puncture the walls of the upper-floor bedrooms.
“The major large volume at the centre has a high-rise void with a big window and skylight in the direction of the sky,” stated Arai. “By integrating the individual spaces that are scattered inside as effectively, it kinds an natural complete.”
The dining space, which occupies this tall and narrow room, is lit by a massive skylight and window. Three pendant lights hang on prolonged flexes from the tallest portion of the ceiling above the wooden dining table.
A single-height residing space with a set of glass doors that open onto the garden sits to a single side of the dining space, while an arched doorway at the other leads through to a galley kitchen.
On the initial floor a long wooden balcony used as a review runs across a single side of the atrium, linking bedrooms positioned on both side.
From here, a glazed door leads onto a roof terrace above the residing area, while a ladder climbs to a “secret hideout” for the client’s kids.
The walls are coated with white plaster throughout, while floors and stairs are covered in a blend of ash boards and poured concrete.
Arched openings feature in a couple of houses about Japan, like a property in Kudamatsu, a renovated residence in Tokyo and an apartment on the outskirts of the capital.
Photography is by Naomi Kurozumi.
Ground floor plan 
Initial floor strategy 
2nd floor program 
Part Dezeen
