DAN DAN DAN HOUSE by 2id Architects

Tsukasa Okada, a director of 2id Architects, has designed a duplex house for two family —the mother and her son's family—, in an industrial district in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture. 2id Architects is a Tokyo-based architecture firm established in 2016 (changed name in 2019).

When we asked Okada about the design concept, he said, "First of all, I wanted to create a space that gathers plenty of light without compromising privacy in an environment sandwiched between a three-story building and a field. The ratio of people in the house was unbalanced, so I designed a shared living room with a high ceiling at the centre, with the mother's area at one end and the family of six at the other end of the living room. So, we divided the space into three parts: mother, shareing, and son's family, and placed each volume like a staircase to let the light in from the clerestories".

Regarding the design of the shared living room, "We wanted it to be an iconic place like a courtyard where a lot of light gathers through the clerestories and people naturally gather. The sunlight collected in this living room is diffused through a translucent polycarbonate wall into the adjoining rooms.

The soft light that passes through this wall gently connects the space, while the translucent wall maintains the privacy of the two families," he said. They also paid special attention to the details of the polycarbonate panels to ensure a frameless finish. For the floor, tatami mats were chosen to create a comfortable space for the family to sit and lie down.

When we asked why the characteristic bright green spiral staircase was added to the living room, he replied, "We wanted to be able to access the living room directly from the children's rooms upstairs so that they could feel what the family was doing. In addition to this staircase, the living room, which has six other entrances, functions as the epicenter of the house where different scenes of everyday life are met. The colour of the stairs was chosen green to match the light green tatami mats. We thought that the unusual combination of tatami mats and spiral staircase was eye-catching. Besides, the subfloor of the living room, which is raised 700mm, is used as a large storage space.

The living room, an inventive combination of tatami mats and translucent walls, which the designer Okada calls a "light-collecting facility," generously connects the spaces and satisfies the requirements of this two-generation house.