SEMIFLAT
year: 2005-2006
use: house
location: Shizuoka
floor: 1floor
structure: RC
site area: 198.77m2
building area: 104.84m2
total floor area: 179.18m2
building coverage ratio: 60%
floor area ratio: 160%
structural design: Kenji Nawa
construction: Sekidou Kensetu
photo: Tomomasa Ueda
October Ueda and Nakagawa Architects

The site is in a rural district of Shizuoka Prefecture, which is in the middle part of Japan. You may say that you can see something or that you can see nothing around. Facing to scenery, which is widely spread with no focal point, it is sometimes true that introversion give you a kind of peace. The client somehow wanted to be closed; and my first impression on the site spoke the same to me.

It is a closed flat. It is buried so that windows could be made only at its front side or court-like center space. To say structurally, the outer walls should be closed for the large cantilever; if was not so, however, I would have opened very small peeping windows for nothing to see. In this rural district, I could not find any reason for pseudo-naturalism to see tamed trees in the artificial center court. So I concentrated power and movement at the center space, by layering truss shaped RC pillars and slops to the roof; after gone up to the roof, one can finally experience something pan-direction space, "under the sky" rather than "scenery." This is because the sky of Shizuoka is larger than any other places' in Japan.