Tsumugu by Archipatch is a wooden house designed to connect with nature
Japanese architecture studio Archipatch has completed a house in the seaside city of Kagoshima that is built from timber and features a material palette chosen to complement its natural surroundings.
Tokyo-based Archipatch designed the Tsumugu house as a case study for local house builder Shichiro Construction, which wanted to utilise timber sourced from the Kyushu island where the company is based.
The single-storey property was built to accommodate a family of four and aims to demonstrate how timber construction can be used to create comfortable and versatile living spaces.
“The house is designed to connect with nature,” said Archipatch, “and to realise a comfortable lifestyle in harmony with the ever-changing natural environment.”
In response to shifting domestic habits in Japan following the coronavirus pandemic, the building provides a variety of flexible spaces that allow the occupants to work and socialise at home.
The house comprises three interconnected volumes that are distinguished externally and internally by their different roof heights.
The building was constructed with a wooden framework that is left exposed internally. Wood is also used extensively for cladding the walls and ceilings, with other natural materials chosen to complement the timber.
“The exterior and interior design is warm and inviting, using cedar, cypress, and natural stone grown in the region to give a sense of the texture that only natural materials can provide,” Archipatch added.
The main entrance is located in the central block and provides access to a lower volume to the left that houses a small boot room and three bedrooms.
A corridor leads past two single bedrooms to a suite at the far end with its own walk-in closet and study.
Directly in front of the entrance at the centre of the house is a Japanese-style room with a tatami-mat floor that can be used as a sitting room, a simple guest room or as a space for doing housework.
Traditional shoji screens made from wood and paper can be closed to separate the Japanese room from the rest of the house, or opened to provide different connections with the entrance and living spaces.
The main open-plan living areas are positioned to the right of the entrance in the tallest section of the house. At one end of the space sits a sunken lounge, which is lined on two sides with large windows looking onto the garden.
Sections of the glazing can be opened to connect the living space with a terrace. This also allows the cool air passing over an adjacent pond to ventilate the interior.
Large overhanging eaves protect the elevations from direct sunlight, while operable clerestory windows allow hot air to escape.
Next to the lounge is a dining space and kitchen with a curved island. A bathroom behind the kitchen has a door in its rear wall that can be opened to enable cross ventilation through the house.
The house is designed to minimise energy consumption, with high levels of thermal insulation, a geothermal heating system and natural ventilation contributing to its sustainable performance.
Other homes in Japan include a mud-covered house and restaurant hidden below ground level and a compact family home with a large stairwell.
The photography is by Yousuke Harigane.
Addressing a high demand for social housing in Mexico City, this project is located on a rectangular plot with its shortest side facing the street. The 42 units are placed in three towers, generating interior courtyards for views and natural ventilation for each apartment, connecting them with vertical cores and bridges above the patios. The masonry brick walls play an important role on the project as they are part of the structure and re-interpret the traditional brick wall, blurring the boundary between structure and ornament. With the use of a single unit; red mud artisanal brick, the team was able to create walls that respond to light and shadow.
At the heart of the Flor project was an effort to try and stabilize the lives of people in the city. As permanent supportive housing, the project features large windows, units with a micro kitchen, and each with their own doorbell to reinforce a sense of respite and privacy. Tree-canopied courtyards and indoor and outdoor activity spaces encourage social interaction to add a sense of wellbeing and community.
For La Courneuve, two buildings and 18 duplex units were designed to provide a diversity of housing. A meticulous architectural style contributes to the regeneration of the Cité des 4000. Built in 1956 by the Ville de Paris, this large-scale operation was designed as an estate composed of blocks sited alongside each other. This siting principle generated undefined and unused free spaces, preventing the appropriation of public spaces which are wasted. The regeneration aimed to suppress the effect of uniform and impersonal blocks to give, once again, meaning to the public space with a true landscape and human dimension. The proposal gives a new identity to the neighborhood while integrating this diversity previously missing at all scales of the project.
CasaNova was an exploration that began with a competition publicly announced by the Social Housing Institute based on a Detailed Plan for the residential expansion. This is a tool the municipal administration had to face the need of social housing with a settlement pattern clearly recognizable in the peripheral context. The plan provided the creation of blocks, the “castles”, made of three to four buildings located around an open tree lined court. Following the numerous plan restrictions, the building emphasizes the unity of the plot by working on the concept of block and by identifying a single kind of construction for the front.
For this innovative project in Paris, the team wanted to embrace the neighborhood. Close to avenue de Flandre and just a stone’s throw from the canal de l’Ourcq, rue de Nantes is a fairly traditional Parisian street of Haussmann and inner-suburb buildings. The project gently inserts itself into a narrow parcel bordered by dense, adjoining housing. On the street side, it extends the building streetscape in a simple manner. On the garden side, the staggering from the 1st to the 6th floors creates large, private, south-facing terraces and allows for an unencumbered view of the sky. The “L” shape and the general volumetrics allowed for the creation of a true, collective garden at the ground level, planted with tall trees.
Looking to the future, multigenerational house is a social housing located in Wrocław, Poland. The building design combines three functions for three generations: flats with a care service for the elderly and the people with disabilities, flats for rent dedicated for the young and families, and a nursery school on the ground floor. House generates 117 apartments with different typologies. The building is part of the model housing estate Nowe Żerniki, where local architects collectively tried to respond to the growing housing problems and poor spatial quality. One of the initial assumptions of the project was to create a facility conducive to the integration of all its residents and users, so the multigenerational house was designed as a quarter.
The ‘”Gungjeong Social Housing’ project was carried out for a new residential space experiment for the millennial generation of Korean society. For the younger generation in Korea, residential space is turning into a private space and, at the same time, a community space in loosely solidarity with people of similar tastes. They are seeking the possibility of living and sharing various convenient spaces together because of the expensive housing costs in Seoul. In this project, community lounge cafes will be planned for use by residents on the first and second floors, while the remaining three floors will have a shared house that can accommodate a total of 11 people. Four people reside on each floor, and there is a shared kitchen with a high ceiling on the top floor.
Creating a new urban model, the Iceberg development aimed to create an opportunity for Denmark’s second largest city to develop in a socially sustainable way by renovating its old, out-of-use container terminal. Looking to the future while creating a distinct district, the area is comprised of a multitude of cultural and social activities, a generous amount of workplaces, and a highly mixed and diverse array of housing types. The Iceberg Project was designed to work within the goals of the overall city development. A third of the project’s 200 apartments are set aside as affordable rental housing, aimed at integrating a diverse social profile into the new neighborhood development.
For the Bjergsted Financial Park in Stavanger, Sparebank 1 SR-Bank wanted a place where the company could realize its visions and offer the best for the surroundings. This seven-floor high building is an example of a future workplace and is one of Europe’s largest office buildings in timber. The volume varies in height to accommodate the varied scales and character of the surrounding buildings. There is a central atrium which brings in light, air and green qualities into the building. Social areas and meeting rooms are organized around this space and act as a buffer towards the quieter workplaces along the façades of the building. The galleries are connected by a spectacular open stair. There is a strong contrast between the sharp, triangulated exterior of glass and metal, against the interior organic design in timber.
The New Aspen Art Museum is located in the center of the high mountain town of Aspen Colorado on a prominent downtown corner site. The three story kunsthalle provides galleries on the first two floors above ground level and on one floor below. The third floor is a multi-function space and café. Half of the third area is given over to an outdoor terrace with views up to the mountains. Design features include an innovative long-span timber space-frame roof structure, woven panel façade, structural glass floors for gallery day-lighting, outdoor gallery stair which connects the site plaza to the third floor roof level and glass elevator.
This mixed-use scheme was designed to encompass the over-ground elements of a new station for the Crossrail project at Canary Wharf. At the heart of the project was a new enclosure unifying the station and other elements including new retail units and a park. The park and the rest of the building is enclosed by a distinctive roof, which wraps around the building like a protective shell. This 300 meter-long (328 yard) timber lattice roof opens in the centre to draw in light and rain for natural irrigation. Timber was an appropriate material to enclose the park: it is organic in nature and appearance, strong, adaptable and is sustainably sourced. Despite the smooth curve of the enclosure, there are only four curved timber beams in the whole structure.
Looking to introduce warmth and light into this unique site, this home was built on the location of the former Housing Expo from ninety years ago. Orientation and shape of the surrounding residential area influenced the silhouette of the structure’s west elevation. A gable roof blends into the neighborhood and draws an arc towards the west side, showing a hint of modernism. To give a warm impression to the exterior facade, natural wood materials were used, where walls stand as a white canvas that complements cherry blossoms in season. The timber structure is enhanced by the transparency of glass, which draws attention from the eye-level pedestrian on the first floor.
Created to be a modular classroom, this timber design includes the construction of a prototype module for environmental education, a learning and discovery space to be installed in different locations of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona park’s network. It is proposed that it becomes also the habitat for some species of animals such as insects, invertebrates, birds, bats… As the team explained, it must be a space open to the outside; it is necessary that one could see the trees from the classroom, to perceive the light and feel the climate. The building was planned as a prefabricated module, flexible and as economical as possible, capable of responding to the different requirements of each municipality for environmental education.
As the design team explored in Timber Rhyme, wood-art has been an integral part of Indian history. Sutradhar community, according to legend, are the carpenters (also known as ‘badhaee’) descended from Maya, the son of Vishwakarma (the divine engineer). This design explored conventional limitations of the material sold by the client, veneers and plywood, and its protagonist role in a conversation that has existed in the ancient past. ‘Timber Rhyme’ occupies the first story of a retail shop in a market complex, Chandigarh. The challenge was to invite a walk through the existing 71′ by 18′ linear block. A timber ribbon invites passerby into the space and to engage with the materials.
When considering the design expression for a new archery hall and boxing club, FT Architects created a pair of buildings a few hundred meters apart on the grounds of Kogakuin University in west Tokyo. The University’s brief was for low-cost structures made of locally sourced timber to provide accessible and inspiring spaces for the students. By chance, both facilities called for a column-free space scaled to a size comparable to a sacred hall in a traditional Japanese temple.
