Echoing the Terrain of the Surrounding Mountains and Coping with Anticipated Flood
Ryuichi Ashizawa Architects & Associates
In the Japan’s mountainous Wakayama prefecture, a new family home is designed to enjoy its harmonious location but protect it from waters of the Kinokawa river. The surrounding persimmon fields along with the farmhouses, private houses, barns, the mountain range, and the riverwhich creates a very calm scenery.
Environment and Topographic Response
This area has a history of being affected by the Kinokawa River, causing the flooding of the surrounding private houses up to the first-floor level. Therefore, the main living room’s level designed was above the anticipated flood-level.
However, instead of simply raising the floor level, we created topographic features inside and outside the site by re-creating the rich terrain of the surrounding mountains.
Space Design
The residence is a two-storey building on a raised terrain.
The first floor, planned at the bottom of the terrain which is more prone to flooding, consists of service spaces such as storage and water supply areas, which the family is less likely to use on an everyday basis. Interior and exterior spaces were created on the uplifted terrain, including the semi-external half of the barn. This simultaneously favored wind flow in the east-west direction into the semi-external and internal space.
The second floor creates a good visual connection with the surrounding natural environment, thus giving the feeling of harmony to the bedroom, pantry, kitchen, and living, where the family spends most of their time. This floor creates another semi-external and semi-internal ambiguous space, setting up an environment where residents can encounter nature and make extensions in the future.
The rainwater falling from the roof flows through-out the site. Therefore, the sewer is designed to extend across the entire site. The remaining soil will be planted with local plants.
Construction & Form
The barn has a simple construction and form. In this design, a simple wooden frame construction method and a simple form with a gable roof were adopted. The outer wall is made of corrugated cement board, wood wool cement board, etc. Most of the internal finish is plywood, with the barn having a simple structure made using industrial products.
As a space where humans and nature confront each other, it was decided that half of the barn would be inside and half would be outside. Another intention of this design was that the architecture and the surrounding environment should be able to respond positively to one another.
Project: Half Barn in Hashimoto / Location: Hashimoto, Wakayama Prefectur, Japan / Architect: Ryuichi Ashizawa Architects & Associates / Structural engineer: Takuo Nagai (University of Shiga Prefecture) / Constructor:Nishimura Constructions / Use: Single Family Residence / Site area: 433.26m² / Bldg. area: 84.91m² / Gross floor area: 96.07m² / Bldg. coverage ratio: 19.60% / Gross floor ratio: 22.18% / Number of floors: 2 / Maximum height: 6.516m / Structure: Timber / Exterior finishing: Glass wool, Wool cement, Slate corrugated board / Interior finishing: Structural plywood, Plywood, Urethane clear coating + Concrete / Completion: 2019.3 / Photograph: Kaori Ichikawa (courtesy of the architect)
