Japanese architect Kouichi Kimura chose grey steel sheets for the exterior of this office and apartment creating in Shiga, offering it an armoured look .
The grey dwell-function block, named Complex, attributes a two-storey employee apartment above a first-floor office.
The creating is found on the edge of a busy arterial road in the Japanese city, surrounded by commercial facilities and residential towers.
This prompted Kimura and his studio FORM to use sheets of pale and dark grey steel to give the 500-square-metre office an imposing look and to differentiate it from its neighbours.
“The strong walls of the facade are completed with rough steel plates, which improve the massiveness of the building,” said the architect.
There are also three steel-clad fins rising from the roof, give the block the stepped outline of a battlement.
A garage occupies the ground floor of the four-storey creating, while the office is set on the 1st floor and a guest apartment is spread out across the two uppermost ranges.
Only a handful of slit-like windows puncture the steel cladding, which varies in texture from smooth on the facade to corrugated on the sides of the constructing.
A horizontal opening in a somewhat protruding block that kinds the second floor supplies an aperture for a partially enclosed balcony, even though another set under the overhang brings daylight into the workplace.
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“The elaborately made positions of the openings create a light look,” said Kimura.
Each the office and a modest decked balcony are accessed through a staircase with checkered treads and a black metal balustrade.
Glazed doors open from a landing at the best of the stairs onto a decked balcony at one side of the block.
A double-height living room is set above the office, while two bedrooms and a bathroom occupy a partial third floor.
A nook in the base of the cast-concrete steps that hyperlinks these two ranges creates a bench. Although the concrete is left exposed on the two lower measures of the stairs, the upper flight has been covered in glossy white paint that reflects the light.
Two small lightwells channel daylight down 1 side of the open-prepare living and dining region. Glazed doors at the front of the space open onto a terrace overlooking the auto park.
“The remarkable design and style makes the best use of shade and shadow both in the external and internal spaces of the developing,” added Kimura.
“The radiating light brings about a tender ambiance on the 1 hand, but creates crisp room on the other.”
A strip of area along the back of the living area can be sectioned off with sliding doors and metal screens to create a house workplace.
A prolonged white table constructed into the wall supplies a workbench, while a raised platform to a single side is lit by a large window with an integrated planter.
Photography is by Yoshihiro Asada.
Ground floor prepare 
First floor prepare 
2nd floor prepare 
Third floor prepare 
Segment one particular 
Part two Dezeen
