Slit House
This house is made "only" by the slits. there is no window. The wall of 105m lengths with 60 slits surround the site realizes the architectural space in this narrow and long site. No other architecture has ever been realized by such method.
This conceptual sculpturing by the slits is poles apart from glass-heavy contemporary architecture. This method with the slits is our challenge to "window". This challenge is an experiment to innovate a design method of architecture. The concept to compose the architecture just by the slits directly figures this architecture. This simple method distinguishes the outline of the entire figure and abstracts the stance of the architecture.
The site is located in an old city in Japan, where many private houses stand in a row. The site size is depth of 50m and width of 7.5m. One of two narrow frontages faces a street and the other faces a river. We designed a long wall that encloses this narrow and long site. The slits open this enclosure. The 140mm width slits screen inner privacy from view from outside. But the slits bring 60 light into the house. This proposes one method to live in a dense residential area in Japan where houses stand side by side. 80 years old woman lives in this house. The house presents her both a life space with a soft light and an interesting experience of scale unlikely in a house.
The slits make us more sensitive to light. The interior space is light beyond our expectations. Light through the slits varies its appearance momently according to weather, season and time. The slits remind us our old experience in memory with poetic scenery. It looks as if a stream of light through Fusuma or Shoji in Japanese traditional architecture or a stream of light from skylight of ancient stone architecture.
This architecture has a silent ambiance just like in the midst of solitary jar and a poetic clearness as like in an endless spatiality. The slits hold the promise of an innovative design method of architecture.
The Slit House has its own special time
At the dawn, watery light comes into the house through the slits. That makes the entire room bright faintly.
At 9:30AM,sequence of the feeble light that reflects to header of slits appears.
At 10:30AM, the sunlight pierces through angled slits at first.
At 11:00AM,the sunlight pierces through all slits. The sunlight through the slit and the reflected light on the header of the slit project the stripe of V type to the long corridor. If you saw the repetition of this edgy light, you might feel as if time of 11:00AM has stopped. In as much as ten minutes, the reflected light on the header disappears. The shape of the light that the slit makes changes from V type into one stripe. The moments that the sun pierces through the angled slits and through the straight slits are different. The angled slits get a little earlier. The momentary time lag let us feel a running of the sun and makes us forefeel the upcoming time of the dusk.
And it shortens little by little. And watery light fills the house again with soft brightness. Then the night comes before long.
Summary of Slit House
1. The slit is our challenge to "window". The slit is an innovative method to compose architecture.
2. This house has no window. The house is perforated by slits instead of windows. The wall with a total length of 105m has 60 slits.
3. This house achieves its architectural quality "only" by the slits. No other architecture has ever been realized by such method.
4. This conceptual sculpturing by the slits proposes another design method to contemporary architecture besides glass-heavy one.
5. The slits bring not view from outside but light into the house. It is an answer to live in dense city.
6. The site is located in an old city in Japan. The narrow and long site is enclosed by the wall that is opened by the slits.
7. The slits make us more sensitive to light. The interior space is light beyond our expectations.
8. The light through the slits varies its appearance momently.
9. The light through the slits reminds us our sense of nostalgia in Japanese spatiality and has an aesthetical quality as like a contemporary art.
10. This architecture has a silent ambiance just like in the midst of solitary jar and a poetic clearness as like in an endless spatiality.
This conceptual sculpturing by the slits is poles apart from glass-heavy contemporary architecture. This method with the slits is our challenge to "window". This challenge is an experiment to innovate a design method of architecture. The concept to compose the architecture just by the slits directly figures this architecture. This simple method distinguishes the outline of the entire figure and abstracts the stance of the architecture.
The site is located in an old city in Japan, where many private houses stand in a row. The site size is depth of 50m and width of 7.5m. One of two narrow frontages faces a street and the other faces a river. We designed a long wall that encloses this narrow and long site. The slits open this enclosure. The 140mm width slits screen inner privacy from view from outside. But the slits bring 60 light into the house. This proposes one method to live in a dense residential area in Japan where houses stand side by side. 80 years old woman lives in this house. The house presents her both a life space with a soft light and an interesting experience of scale unlikely in a house.
The slits make us more sensitive to light. The interior space is light beyond our expectations. Light through the slits varies its appearance momently according to weather, season and time. The slits remind us our old experience in memory with poetic scenery. It looks as if a stream of light through Fusuma or Shoji in Japanese traditional architecture or a stream of light from skylight of ancient stone architecture.
This architecture has a silent ambiance just like in the midst of solitary jar and a poetic clearness as like in an endless spatiality. The slits hold the promise of an innovative design method of architecture.
The Slit House has its own special time
At the dawn, watery light comes into the house through the slits. That makes the entire room bright faintly.
At 9:30AM,sequence of the feeble light that reflects to header of slits appears.
At 10:30AM, the sunlight pierces through angled slits at first.
At 11:00AM,the sunlight pierces through all slits. The sunlight through the slit and the reflected light on the header of the slit project the stripe of V type to the long corridor. If you saw the repetition of this edgy light, you might feel as if time of 11:00AM has stopped. In as much as ten minutes, the reflected light on the header disappears. The shape of the light that the slit makes changes from V type into one stripe. The moments that the sun pierces through the angled slits and through the straight slits are different. The angled slits get a little earlier. The momentary time lag let us feel a running of the sun and makes us forefeel the upcoming time of the dusk.
And it shortens little by little. And watery light fills the house again with soft brightness. Then the night comes before long.
Summary of Slit House
1. The slit is our challenge to "window". The slit is an innovative method to compose architecture.
2. This house has no window. The house is perforated by slits instead of windows. The wall with a total length of 105m has 60 slits.
3. This house achieves its architectural quality "only" by the slits. No other architecture has ever been realized by such method.
4. This conceptual sculpturing by the slits proposes another design method to contemporary architecture besides glass-heavy one.
5. The slits bring not view from outside but light into the house. It is an answer to live in dense city.
6. The site is located in an old city in Japan. The narrow and long site is enclosed by the wall that is opened by the slits.
7. The slits make us more sensitive to light. The interior space is light beyond our expectations.
8. The light through the slits varies its appearance momently.
9. The light through the slits reminds us our sense of nostalgia in Japanese spatiality and has an aesthetical quality as like a contemporary art.
10. This architecture has a silent ambiance just like in the midst of solitary jar and a poetic clearness as like in an endless spatiality.
1 comment
add comment
Subject
Author
Date
hmm
Michal Just
07.08.10 08:15
show all comments
