I'm home

Kobe city in Hyogo prefecture in Kansai area, is famous for having luxurious and exotic former residences of early foreign settlers, built in Meiji period. Kitano area overlooking Kobe harbor is a tourist spot and at the same time, it's a prime residential area. Currently there are commercial facilities and houses of old-established families in this area, forming a unique cityscape.
The owner was hoping to live in this uptown and purchased the land of 75m2, overlooking
Kobe harbor. An architect, Kenji Tagashira proposed an innovative plan to use "black" for outside walls, which wouldn't impair the atmosphere of the cityscape. Moreover, to make a limited space look big, the same color and materials were chosen for indoor and outside walls. They were spray painted but by having a different finishing touch, texture was designed to be varied.
Moreover, not to give dark and small feel to the inside, the building frame was raised to the farthest limit of legal regulation and the stairs were located in the center of the building frame. Having the stairs as an axis, 1m width of glass window was inserted from east side to the ceiling and to the west side according to the sun orbit. So the frame of window is shaped like a rectangle with one side missing. For the stairs, only slots are put in so that the maximum lighting can be achieved to downstairs. With this effect, the first floor is quite bright. As for the living room and dining kitchen, slit-type windows were put in everywhere, thus the sight line naturally heads toward outside and spacious feeling is created.
At night, black walls function as continuous line blending in the darkness and creates more spacious feeling. At the same time, the beauty of night view is accentuated. Furthermore, as for lighting, floor lamps are located which is rare in Japan. This creates some nuance in the space.

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