tayo house

    This is the renovation project of the center part of the connected row houses, named Japanese “Nagaya” in Kyoto. Our goal of this project is to realize an expansive "personal space" for users within the distinctive Kyoto-city’s scale, which gradually narrows from the main road to the private alley leading to the room in this Nagaya.

    On the first floor, where the living space, dining space, kitchen, washroom, dressing room, and bathroom converge, we aimed to divide the space into three sections with walls, according to the positions of existing structural columns. These walls are finished with warm and textured wooden panels, and straight joint part of them indicates the regularity of Nagaya’s housing equal divisions. By fitting hooks and switches, and arranging gates to each room on these walls, goods of daily life and resident’s activities will appear around them. The living and dining space with the only high ceilings is placed among these three walls that are appeared mixing with external and internal circumstances. Consequently residents could get calm place and time as if they spend slow time in a pocket park surrounded with housing and building. This is our proposal as a lifestyle to live surrounded with volumes even in this small Nagaya’s house.