The Japanese architect Jun Igarashi, designed a small house that has the form of a cube with the same proportions on all of its four elevations. This house is located in Shikaoui, Hokkaido prefecture in Japan. It was designed and built in 2008. Its architectural concept is based on combining Japanese minimalism with a modern European industrial aesthetic. Even though the building’s function is a house for more than one family to live in, it appears like a warehouse for industrial supplies from the outside.
Jun Igarashi arranged the architecture within the building’s whole volume, as a framework to compose the project’s spaces within it, by taking a simple cube and hollowing it out from the inside through rectangular and cubic volumes, and by subdividing its spaces horizontally and vertically, into rectangular and square units. Thus the building is like a large box with several different boxes of varying different sizes and proportions put inside it. The different boxes inside, even though they have different sizes, scales, and proportions correspond to each other in specific scales as functions of the same ratios in relation to each other.
The architect hollowed out the building at its center with a floor to ceiling triple-height volumetric space. This space spans from the western wall all the way to the eastern wall at the opposite end of the building. At the center of this living space lies a very tall, thin, steel structural column with an I – Beam section. It’s not just structural but also an aesthetic element of the project and it holds it together at its center.
One can visualize oneself rotating around the building’s central column in a circumscribing manner, where the building’s geometry and the rest of its functions are composed and arranged. So even though the composition of the project is in squares and rectangles arranged within one big square or cube, the placement of the straight rectilinear furniture around the central column in the central void has circular virtual motion in their positioning in relation to each other around the column in the center.
The kitchen, dining table, living room, and bar are all in the same central space. They are placed around the central column. Even though this space is a domestic living space, it appears and feels like a high and wide industrial space. It has a relatively narrow and long proportion to maintain a dynamic perspective, but not too narrow and not too long in order to preserve its function as a static, domestic, living space. This configuration allows the inhabitants to use the space together as a family, and it brings them together near the center.
The central space/interior volume that has a full floor to ceiling clear height is multifunctional. It has a dining table, a linear kitchen that can be accessed from all 360 degrees around it, a living room with couches and a sitting table in front of a TV, and a long and thin linear open-bar off-set from the long side of the main space, adjacent to the wall that it is stuck to directly beside it.
To accentuate the verticality and thin and high proportion in the main interior central space as part of the architecture’s composition, the architect placed three long and thin dangling ceiling lights that are suspended from the ceiling. They are parallel to each other and to the central column. Their height that spans from the ceiling down to where they stop in mid-air is half of the clear height of the interior space.
The house’s central interior space is flanked on both opposing sides, in a symmetrical fashion by two thin buffer zones. They are long and relatively thin and narrow in proportion. The architect fit multiple varying functions in these two zones on three floors/levels. Both zones are cut-out on their interior elevations using wide and high rectangular openings, to open – up these zones physically, visually, and spatially to the central interior space.
All interior walls are painted pure white to maximize the effect of minimalism inside the house. The exterior facades are corrugated steel to make it have an industrial aesthetic ware-house style, when it is seen and approached from the outside. The wide openings of the interior buffer spaces have retractable curtains installed to cover them fully to provide the inhabitants with privacy between each other when needed. The curtains themselves are actually translucent, to maintain light and blurred views of motion and shadows behind them. However they block the view to the adjacent spaces, and block the view for the people sitting outside, from the outside to the inside as well.
The central interior cubic volume that is hollowed out of the building’s mass from the inside, has two opposite square windows on the ground floor. There is one on each opposite elevation of this space. They are diagonally located opposite each other across the living space. They are placed in an asymmetrical composition in plan along a diagonal axis that traverses the central space from one corner to the other. Both windows have one edge that bleeds and is adjacent to the wall beside it on one side of each corner of the rectangular space from the inside. Both windows provide natural light into the central space from two opposite corners of both elevations. They provide views to the exterior gardens. They also provide external viewers approaching the building sneak peak views to the interior central space.
The buffer zone on the north consists of three floors. On the ground floor, there is a bathroom, a toilet, and a staircase that leads up to the first floor. The long, thin and narrow rectangular buffer zone is subdivided in plan into four square compartments. Except for the staircase, it has a rectangular proportion. The three other subsequent compartments are placed in linear succession one after the other as boxes. After the staircase are the toilet (half a square), the washing room (a full square), and the shower after that, (also a full square). They are a series of box – spaces, subdivided in this buffer zone in linear sequence within one long and thin rectangle.
Going up the staircase, one accesses the first floor. Its interior elevation is cut – out across its entire horizontal plane. Thus, it opens up this buffer zone’s first floor space visually and spatially to the central void of the project. Between the first and second floor is a double height void that connects the visitor to the upper cut – out second floor slab. One can sit on the edge of the slab, with one’s feet and legs dangling from the slab edge with no parapet or railing to protect one from falling down three floors!!
A wide and epic interior view of the central box – like inside space is framed as a cubic perspective for the person sitting on the edge of the slab. The inside perspective of sitting within a pure box, is quite dynamic and steep and deep even though the house has static square and rectangular proportions. The upper floors have no particular functions. They are left empty to be furnished by the inhabitants depending on how they want to use them as they see fit according to their own preferences. Instead of designing a parapet or railing, a floating suspended beam is held at waste height above the slab to act as a protective barrier from falling over the edge down to the ground floor!!
At the south wall of the building, opposite the north buffer – zone, is located the south buffer zone. Here also, the architect subdivided the narrow, long, thin rectangular volume in plan, and narrow and high in section, into cubic compartments, adjacent to each other in linear succession. In similar fashion to how the north buffer zone is subdivided into 3 floors and several compartments of pure geometric cubes.
However, the south buffer zone has a different configuration of subdivisions and spaces composed differently form the ones located at the north wall. It also has a different set of functions. It also has a slightly wider proportion compared to its northern counterpart. It has a double flight staircase, and also 3 floors. Yet, the circulation between the first and second floors isn’t a staircase. This time, it’s a ladder that leads up to a cut – out double height slab mezzanine.
The external facades on both the north and south elevations have irregular window compositions, and openings. The compositions of the openings are asymmetrical on the facades in relation to each other. Most windows are square in proportion, and only a few are rectangular.
On the ground floor, the south buffer – zone has a bedroom on its south west corner. The double flight staircase is in between the bedroom and the project’s entrance foyer on the south east corner. Up on the first floor is a double – height void, in between the ground floor and second floor.
On the second floor which is accessed by a ladder, is also a cut-out slab with a void above the staircase’s shaft. It has a large rectangular closed storage room with a square window at its eastern wall. Again, the interior elevation of the buffer zone at the south is a large rectangular cut – out along almost the entire length of the buffer zone. It frames the perspective of the central cubic space. It provides an epic interior view towards the entire inside box/volume of the entire house itself at its interior. There is also a small library on the second floor of the south buffer zone designed as pieces of furniture as part of the architecture’s design.
The building has 4 four elevations. Each elevation has a different composition of square openings and windows different from the other. The north elevation has an irregular composition of windows with high contrast in sizes. The windows on the lower floors are small and square in proportion. The upper second floor has a large square opening that spans from floor to ceiling to let in as much light as possible, and to provide the people inside with a large wide view to the outside. Both irregular elevations correspond to the north buffer zone spaces and the south buffer zone spaces at the opposite end of the building. The other two elevations on the eastern and western walls are mainly closed opaque facades with only one small square window on each lower side of the building. Each located at each lower corner of the opposing walls. All openings and windows are designed with a square proportion, not vertical or horizontal rectangles.
The benefits of living in such a peculiar house, is how it provides its inhabitants with privacy and a sense of security from the external city. When one enters this house, it’s as if one is living in another world completely different from that of the city outside. Despite its static cubic and square proportions, it gives one a very dynamic feeling of perspective and space when one is inside it. Its external industrial aesthetic harmonizes with the context it is located in, especially that there is an urban scrapyard in the neighboring lot beside it. Its white washed interior walls and minimalist interior spaces contrast starkly with its exterior finishing, gives a sense of calmness and tranquility to the user inside. It’s like a pure geometric sanctuary for the people living inside it from the crowded noisy industrial city outside. However, the dramatic spatial effects of the architecture inside and its pure whiteness can make some people feel nauseous or have a dizzying sense or vertigo.
The architect sacrifices some of the comfort for the visitors or users for the sake of a dynamic spatial perspective and rigorous pure geometry and minimalism. The spaces can be considered sterile and devoid of warmth with very little variety. Still, the design is very sharp, strong, and precise. This displays the architect’s skill and design abilities in rigorous geometric design language and sense of space and proportion and scale.
The House of Trough deserves to be explored spatially from the outside in, and inside out throughout all its corners, floors, different heights perspectives, vantage points, and positions. That way it provides the visitor with a lot of multiple different angles and view – points to observe and examine it across countless varying perspectives and points of vision. It is an amazing achievement to be implemented in architecture, using simple and pure design language and geometry, and having rich spaces with very little complexity and a lot of simple geometry.