Io is a compact house designed and built for a young family in Anjō, a small city in Japan. Architect Osamu Morishita designed the house to encourage social interaction among its occupants and with the neighbors. The social spaces are fronted by glass facades, allowing passersby to see right through the house. Some people would not be comfortable having their lives so visible to the outside world, but the owners wanted to present an open and inviting appearance to the neighborhood.
This small house in Steamboat Springs, Colorado combines modern design and a cutting-edge super-insulated building envelope with a traditional exterior appearance. As its name suggests, the Diagon Alley house sits just off the lane at the rear of its lot. Designated as an accessory unit under Steamboat Springs’ zoning bylaws, there will eventually be a second house built at the front of the lot. The Diagon Alley house was designed by architect Erik Lobeck of WorkshopL, a Colorado firm focused on ultra energy-efficient design and construction.
The house has a simple gable-roofed building form. It is clad in an attractive combination of reclaimed boards and metal siding. Besides the aesthetic appeal, the metal also serves a functional purpose. Skirting the bottom of the house, it protects the wall from the splashback of roof run-off hitting the ground.
House in Setagawa occupies a compact east-facing lot in a densely-built suburb of Tokyo. With little room in which to build on a tight lot, the most common solution is to make the house as wide as possible and leave a small backyard. But with most windows at the front and back, that can leave the middle of the house dark. Architects Kazuya Shikinami of SKAL and Shin Yokoo of OUVI took a different approach, designing a long and narrow house that stretches to the rear property line but leaves room for a narrow side yard on the south side. The main windows face the side yard, allowing ample daylight to reach every major room.
Today we visit a small timber framed house in the Czech Republic. It is located on the outskirts of the historic town of Kromeriz, on a long and narrow lot with mature trees. ARCHTEAM worked within the constraints of the lot to produce a design that is closed on the sides but open to the backyard. The architects describe it as being like “a piece of furniture in the middle of the garden”.
© Alejandro del Castillo
This small modern house is located near Villarrica, Chile and has a view over a valley to the Villarrica Volcano. For a relatively small house, it has a fairly complex and dynamic shape. The house consists of two opposing shed-roofed volumes separated by a small courtyard. Architect Rodrigo del Castillo of Chilean studio DOM designed the two volumes to correspond to the client’s request for a house with a separate flexible-use space.
This small cabin sits on an arid hillside in Casablanca, a grape growing region of central Chile about an hour’s drive northwest of Santiago. It has expansive views of the valleys and ravines below. The clients wanted an unpretentious refuge that would be efficient to build and to use.
Tokyo is home to many small houses shoehorned onto even smaller lots. Today’s small house sits on a lot so small, it previously served as a single parking space. With only 29.92 m2 (322 ft2) of buildable area, architect Satoshi Kurosaki of APOLLO Architects had no choice but to build up, creating a home with four levels plus an attic space. All those levels are connected by a switchback stair that rises up through the center of the house. The name “Seven” actually refers to the number of flights in the staircase.
This small house in the Hollywood Hills was designed in 1959 by legendary modernist architect Richard Neutra. The home has either been very well maintained through the years or lovingly restored, appearing like a time capsule from the 50′s. It contains signature Neutra elements such as a wall of glass, low-slung built-in furniture and a large open masonry fireplace. Neutra had a reputation for paying close attention to his clients’ requirements and for producing very practical designs that combined aesthetic appeal with function and comfort.
The street side, sitting only a few steps from the roadway, is mostly closed with just a window for the kitchen and a line of clerestory windows that bring natural light into the home’s two bathrooms. The other side, with a view of the Hollywood Hills, is largely glass with a floor-to-ceiling glass wall running the entire length of the main living space. A large roof overhang provides shade for those south-facing windows. A similar roof cantilever at the front forms an open carport just off the street.
