By a Creek in Shinmachi
Comments: 7
Ah, they really knew how to put houses together here once upon a time. This magnificent place makes a serious bid for a spot on the top five most desirable houses list, and would be a shoe-in if not for the fact that it’s in such an inconvenient location. It’s a beautifully situated house, mind you, just far from anywhere.
Behold the wondrous materials of the Japanese house — wood, tin, tile and plaster.
This house probably makes the list after all. Who cares how far away it is from anywhere, it’s a simply beautiful place — large, well set out, cleverly designed, and perfectly positioned on a large corner block with good eastern clearance and what must feel like sole ownership of the whole brilliantly unobstructed hemisphere of southern sky thanks to the neighbouring house being low and likewise well-positioned.
The gate of the house opens west onto a quiet residents-only road immediately beyond which is a small creek lined with cherry trees whose far bank is a cobbled lane for foot and bicycle traffic.
Above is the western face of the house at about 1:30pm as we rode by on the way to visit friends (it was only our second time to visit them in their new house and we didn’t take this route before). The house is boarded up — there appears to be no one living here.
Below, the west face looks to the left of the picture while the southern face looks right. This is at about 4:30pm and the house is beginning to glow.
The roof of the big southern room is interesting — hips thrown out to create little reverse eaves back in to just below the windows of the large 8-mat room on the second storey. I think this was done to reduce the solar reflection off the silvery tiles which would seriously up-light the second-floor room in the summer, just baking it. Running the ridge away from the wall keeps the bounce from the mica’d tiles angled short of the top room. Given how these places heat up, it could be a noticeable number of degrees cooler up there in the summer just by doing this, not to mention that you get a larger room on the first floor.
I’ll finish with this big two-shot composite taken from under a cherry tree on the far side of the creek:
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Posted to Architecture • 2003.03.03 (Mon) • 01:33
Comments
Posted by Kris 2003.03.03, 03:07
okay! how much?
*opens obscure briefcase with a lot of green papers inside*
Posted by Red 2003.03.03, 03:32
correct me if I'm wrong, but is that a corner window I see? and now that I think about it, I wonder how often corner windows appear in Japanese residential architecture (if at all), especially–let's say–around the time Frank Lloyd Wright was around.
Posted by Red 2003.03.03, 03:34
correct me if I'm wrong, but is that a corner window I see? and now that I think about it, I wonder how often corner windows appear in Japanese residential architecture (if at all), especially–let's say–around the time Frank Lloyd Wright was around.
Posted by Chris 2003.03.03, 10:01
I think posting the list price for this house would shatter quite a few dreams.
However, I have read that house prices, though still rising globally, are coming down ever so slowly over here.
Over here in Japan that is.
Sigh. Four weeks left and then I leave. In fact it's a little less than that. Maybe I'll have to come back doing something a little less soul-destroying than teaching English.
Posted by Kristen 2003.03.03, 10:32
Beautiful house. We nearly rented one of similar vintage near Ueno Park, though different construction. It was absolutely gorgeous on the inside and out. It would have been ours except that the owner's mother didn't like foreigners. He deferred to her and we didn't get the house. :-(
Posted by andrea 2003.03.03, 14:53
love your website, and i really miss japan.
when i was in kyoto we stayed at toji-an hostel. it was a really old house with squeaky staircase, narrow steps, and low ceilings. it was a great experience.
Posted by gomichild 2003.03.03, 15:34
Lurv dem blue-tiled roofs…
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