Stepped box: this multi-generational house in Kyoto makes inventive use of a confined site

Architectural Review, The, May, 2004 by Michael Webb

On a quiet street in the north Kyoto neighbourhood of Shimogamo is an enigmatic spectacle--a white concrete box, lofted above a carport and broken only by a ribbon of windows and a single porthole to one side. Aluminum panels on the rear wall of the carport curve down, with a door to the left and a gate giving on to a broad flight of steps to the right.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

This is the first hint of the feature that gives the house its character: concrete steps with wooden treads that lead up to a rear terrace and then switch back, past the master bedroom to a belvedere overlooking the street, a jumble of tiles and towers, and the encircling hills. A long cylindrical bar of orange-painted steel evokes a tori (temple gate) and serves as a balustrade. You are given a choice: walk in or walk over, which mirrors the sharp distinction in the Japanese mind between private and public space.

Inevitably, comparisons will be made to the Villa Malaparte on Capri, a rectilinear block of rooms that mutates into a wedge of steps. The villa is operatic in its setting, perched on a spur of rock between land and sea; you view it whole and its windows frame the landscape. In essence, Malaparte is an eccentric bachelor's apartment, with guest rooms tucked in below. By contrast, the Skip house was designed for a multi-generational family, is shoehorned on to a double lot and is inward looking. Its interlocking, multi-level spaces are revealed only as you move through them. The steps are largely concealed from the street and they flow over the house, becoming a stepped roof that wraps around two inner courtyards and is being landscaped with planters. The decks, enclosures and voids that punctuate the ascent are outdoor living spaces that flow out of the interiors, and it is easy to imagine that a typhoon has blown off a conventional roof and revealed the upper floors.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The house is uncompromisingly modern in its austere geometries and exposed materials, but it is intensely traditional in the progression, through canyons and caverns, from light to shadow, hard to soft surfaces. The entrance hall is paved in slate, the living areas--flooded with natural light from a glass ceiling--have wood strip floors and the bedrooms have inset tatami mats. A home office, tucked inside the entry for ease of access, is sculpted space, with curved walls and ceiling and a slot opening on the inner face. The underside of the steps is expressed in scalloped ceilings, and a narrow flight of slate-covered stairs runs up to the bedrooms between walls of polished concrete. Perforated sliding doors suggest traditional shoji screens and are echoed in the parapet of punched-out aluminum sheets (salvaged from a can-making plant) that surrounds the skylight. Glass sliders open up from the sparely furnished living room on to a moat of smooth white stones, but the interior of the paterfamilias' apartment to the rear is entirely traditional, with its lining of tatami and shoji. The family's two teenagers sleep and play at the top of the house in a series of loft spaces with Western-style bunk beds and storage.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Tom Daniell, a New Zealander who has settled in Kyoto, was project architect, working closely with Katsu Umebayashi, principal of FOBA. 'Katsu revised my sketches at every stage,' he explains, 'turning ramps into steps, for example, strengthening the Japanese character of the interiors.' The concept of progression from one level to another was first developed in FOBA's labyrinthine offices, and the purity of a cutaway white cube was explored in a set of model homes that the firm designed as a speculative venture. The Skip House accommodates the needs of five people and parking for three cars on 10 X 20 m lot with strict height limitations. These spaces filled the footprint, so the garden was placed on top rather than to the rear.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

It also contributes to the urbanity of a city that was spared Allied bombing only to be attacked by ruthless speculators and their bureaucratic cronies. The former Imperial capital has lost most of its traditional wooden town houses and--with the exception of a few historic enclaves, an occasional new building of distinction and its garland of temples--has become almost as drab and ugly as lesser Japanese cities. 'Preservation here is no longer an issue of maintaining the forms and materials of traditional buildings,' says Daniell. 'Instead, it is the organization, scale and structure of the city itself that must be respected.'

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]