Soeda and Associates

The site is located in an area with a mixture of houses, rental apartments, and small factories. The site is long and narrow from east to west, with a frontage of approximately 7.5 m x 22 m. Only the east side of the site is tangent to the road, and the other three sides are surrounded by neighboring buildings.

Three wooden volumes are arranged along the longitudinal direction of the site with the maximum allowable building area, and each has a different form in terms of lighting to each dwelling unit, visibility to the sky, and the way to deal with the diagonal line of the road. The voids between the volumes are covered with white gravel, which functions as a court for lighting from the sky and also serves to eliminate sound leakage between neighboring units, which is a particular concern with wooden structures. All units have approximately 4-meter-high ceilings, and some have lofts to create as large an air volume as possible.