Closing and Opening New Relationships
From the standpoint that architecture is the creation of various relationships, a building or site closed off from its surroundings feels out of place. Yet, there is also a yearning for a scene where an uncompromising building stands tall in a dry, desert-like place.
This house, located in Mizuho City, Gifu Prefecture, sits on a site of about 1,000 m² enclosed by a wall. The owner requested a secure living environment and a compact house with an efficient circulation. Interpreted straightforwardly, this would result in a closed-off building that fails to take advantage of the generous distance and openness a large site offers. The main design theme thus became creating a new relationship that is both closed to and open toward the surrounding environment while meeting the owner’s needs.

Zigzag Wall — 45-Degree Rotated Grid
I have long been intrigued by the simple rule that the misalignment between the subdivision of urban lots and the spatial division of buildings can generate a unique local magnetism. Here, I applied a grid rotated 45 degrees from the north–south axis to divide the space, and then cut it off within an outer frame of roughly 14 meters square. The resulting zigzag folded exterior wall makes this misalignment visible and draws awareness toward it. The weakened continuity between inside and outside due to the retaining wall accentuates the unique order of the interior space, offset 45 degrees from its surroundings. This sense of being cut off from the environment was expected to give residents a feeling of security. The interior consists of a single-story, one-room plan with high circulatory flow, where a central earthen-floored space faces three differently characterized light courts, ensuring spatial division, daylighting, and ventilation, while maintaining visual unity.

Abstract Landscapes of Margin
The design takes advantage of the large site to create meaningful “margin” space. The closed house and the open front garden form two independent worlds. The front garden, visually disconnected from the house, serves as a free field for casual sports or large gatherings without concern. A white container with a display space placed at the front of the site, combined with a steel folded-plate roof, abstracts the functions of storage and parking, erasing the sense of everyday life and specific location from the site as a whole.
Visitors can layer fragments of their own memories over the space, experiencing an abstract landscape of margin born from the contrast between architecture and the earth/sky. This may have succeeded in creating a place where such open-ended imagery is possible.