shifting the structure

The site is located in a typical suburban area along the slopes of Kobe, Japan. The slope was scraped off, with the surrounding terrain intact allowing for abundant sunlight, and vegetation.Tomohiro Hata Architect and Associates thought about how human beings will inhabit the home; which connects the interior environments with the slope, where the client could literally “live on the slope” indoors or outdoors. In order to make these two elements compatible, they were faced with the issue of how to freely arrange the space across the floor, how to arbitrate the shift of the upper and lower floor

Tomohiro Hata Architect and Associates decided to lay down walls laminated with arches that successfully organizes the plan of shifting the structure between the upper and lower level, by receiving the force from above in a pyramidal shape.

Accordingly, the space composition changes from the front to the back, by connecting the walls like a Romanesque façade. This makes the architecture not resist the dynamics, but allow free space stacking. Through the conception and practice of this architecture, THA hope to show an example of a way to adopt the terrain with slopes and to embody the richness of living in slopes obediently.