Archive for the ‘EASTERN design’ tag

Ninja Homes: MON Factory

[click images for larger view]

"House with Crest"

The holes are lined up on a cross shape. The hole is made on the architecture like the perforated line. This architecture is "House with Crest". A light that penetrates into the architecture always moves and never stays. It is a symbolic spectacle. A light that goes through the hole is projected in a circle shape, moves unlimitedly, and never stays. Occasionally, it disappears, and it appears.

Here for this week’s edition of ‘Ninja Homes’ we have the MON Factory/House 8 in Kyoto, Japan designed by EASTERN design. Completed in 2007, the 260 m2 project houses both a workshop of a traditional craftsman and his family home.

The owner wanted a home that could accommodate his business - creating crests for traditional Japanese clothing - while keeping the living and work spaces distinct and separate. EASTERN’s solution was to raise the majority of the project off of street level, creating a parking area beneath the main structure of the building, with a storefront for the craftsman’s business on the street. The workspace is then directly above the shop, connecting the two spaces while making the actual workshop more private.

The second level - with the workshop and living spaces - is divided by two courtyards into it’s primary parts, namely the workshop, the living room / kitchen area, and the bedroom, by two small courtyard spaces. Essentially, hallways run along both sides of the house [around these courtyards, which don’t reach the perimeter of the building], connecting the various spaces. Get a better look at the plan in larger detail, here.

We "lift the one-storied house to the sky" to create calm interior space. It is lifted to 3m in the sky. The space under that is lent as a parking lot. The one-storied house lifted to the sky makes "two outside spaces placed among three inside spaces". The wind and the light of nature gather from the sky into two outside void spaces. And that extends to three inside spaces.

The only break in the exterior concrete walls of the building come in the form of a series of circular ‘holes’ - which speak directly to the circular shape of the tradition crests being made in the workshop.

Two street side walls overlap on "Mise (show/shop)" space from right and left as like the breast of the Kimono. The "breast" interior becomes the shop space. The circular holes made for a cross shape becomes a pattern that decorates the wall as a crest. The kinds of crests reaches 7000. Any complicated crest pattern is formed from circle.

The workshop area and the living area are separated and also connected. The client and his daughter have such living style. The crest making is a delicate work and also a business work. It is quiet, and also busy. The drifting cloud is seen, and they finish working, and relax in the living room at the middle space.

The reflected light becomes an infinite line of light and extends into the darkness of twilight on both side window of the living room. And the dark becomes deeper. In this one-storied house lifted to the sky a night goes on like that.

::photographs by Kouichi Torimura::

.:originally posted on AMNP->