In the southwestern part of Kyoto City, the site is located where a panoramic view of the Daigo mountains suddenly spreads out in the distance, after passing through a residential area with a mix of old and new small houses. A young family who had moved from one place to another in Japan for business reasons decided to settle down here.

The vast panorama of mountains and the intimate space for the family. These two things, which differ in scale and nature, could constantly relate to each other and form the family's daily life. This is where I saw the potential of living in this place.

 

In this project, we attempted to realize it by the "form" of the space. The living room, the center of the house, has a right-angled isosceles triangle plan, and a triangular single-sided roof is placed on top. It opens toward the mountain range in plan and narrows down toward it in section. On the other hand, other rooms, such as bedrooms, bathrooms, and storage rooms, are contained in an L-shaped two-story volume along the isosceles, and the living room opens in section toward the inside corner of the volume.

 

The shape of space creates a variety of places to build a gradational relationship with the mountains and the family. For example, the family dining table, located at the 45-degree corner of the isosceles triangle, is a shallow space and faces the mountains through a large window, so the presence of the mountains is strongly felt while dining. The spiral staircase, located at the inside corner of the L-shaped volume, gives you a dominant impression of the mountain range beyond the horizontally continuous window in the living room at the lower end, but as you ascend the staircase, you feel as if you are entering a three-dimensional, internal series of spaces. The degree of connection between the living room and other rooms on the second floor varies continuously according to the shape of the triangular pyramidal void created by the triangular roof. They are more connected on the inside corner of the L-shaped volume, while the space at the both ends of the volume are more independent. On the other hand, the presence of the mountain range, which disappears from the view and fades from consciousness at the inside corner of L-shaped volume, is reaffirmed at the both ends of the volume, where it spreads out beyond the large openings. Also, these two ends look at each other through the windows and create a sense of distance between the family members.

 

Sometimes you feel the mountain range as close to you as your family, and sometimes you feel your family as distant as the mountain range. The place of living could exist as shades of such a relationship. I think it can be a contemporary state of living space today, when the sense of distance between people, town, and nature has diversified through the experience of digital technology and viruses.

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