Door House
Meguro-ku, Tokyo, Japan
The building site for this residence is a flag lot within a flag lot, set back from the road and surrounded by neighboring houses. This tiny urban property was created when the developer subdivided an existing flag lot. The residents are a young couple around thirty years old with two children who wanted a home where they could host many guests.
When we visited the property for the first time, we envisioned light and air flooding softly into the house when the door was opened, and this became the guiding image for the project. Given a property on which views let alone natural light and ventilation were challenges, the keys to the design became the pole-shaped approach, the setback regulations on the north side, and the horizontal slice of sky visible on the south side.
The setback regulations determined the tidy form and size of the volume, which we positioned at the back of the property with one exterior wall opening onto the approach like a door. This wall functions both as a structural and fire wall. In addition, skylights face the sky to the south, where buildings are unlikely to be constructed in the future. These two features give the house an open, inviting atmosphere despite its small size. Thanks to its unusual form, the house itself seems to be saying, “Welcome home! Come in!”
