A bright orange wall screens a staircase that prospects to a bathroom on top of this concrete property in Tokyo by Takuro Yamamoto Architects (+ slideshow).
The family house, named H-Orange, sits on a narrow plot between another property and the perimeter wall of a small field filled with allotments.
To provide a degree of privacy for the residents, the Tokyo firm directed a windowless wall towards the neighbouring building and arranged openings mainly along its western side.
Glazed living spaces are positioned on the initial floor of the constructing to benefit from views above the top of the brick perimeter wall to the allotments and woods past.
Like the firm’s Little House Large Terrace, H-Orange functions a large patio that supplies the family members with personal outdoor space on the first floor. This will take the form of an L-shaped terrace that wraps about the exposed-concrete lounge and dining area.
“To emphasise the scene of the woods and large blue sky over the discipline, the west side of the first floor is widely opened with horizontal windows, and a large open-air terrace,” explained the studio.
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“But the see of the discipline itself is not truly gorgeous because it was insensitively walled by bricks and these walls seemed to give closed feeling of the spot.”
The answer was to include a 12-metre-lengthy tilted beam along the front of the terrace, blocking views of the offending wall beneath and also rising the privacy of the house.
The beam tilts outwards, with a prolonged narrow gap along the base to maximise the sum of natural light that reaches the terrace.
“An ordinary vertical reduced wall is ample for these purposes, but this kind of variety of wall would make the open-air terrace dark and harm the spacious feeling,” said the architects. “The “tilt beam” is lifted slightly over the floor to form a slit of light and tilted outwards to make the surface of the beam brighter with sunshine.”
“The height of the ’tilt beam’ was meticulously made the decision to minimize off the reduce half of the scene from inside, and so the views from the terrace and the residing area consist only of pure blue sky and green woods, and the open-air feeling of the residence is emphasised.”
A timber staircase that hyperlinks the ground floor garage and bedrooms with the lounge and bathroom over is hidden behind a slab of orange-painted concrete.
The stairs rise via an atrium over the lounge to the bathroom, which is positioned on a tiny 2nd storey. Here, picture windows and skylights are positioned to take advantage of the views.
Site prepare – click for bigger image 
Ground floor program – click for bigger image 
Initial floor program – click for bigger picture 
Initial floor – click for larger image 
Area – click for greater image 
