We're all guilty of complaining about the size of our house. 'An extra bedroom would be perfect' or, 'I just wish I has some more space in the kitchen'. Meanwhile Japanese Architects are used to dealing with tiny sites. And what they manage to fit into these tight and irregular sites should be inspiration for how we can all live a simpler and smaller life. Love House by Takeshi Hosaka has enough space for a couple (and a bunny) in just 33 square meters. I don't want to hear anymore complaints about the size of your house after seeing this...
From the architect:
Genesis of the Old Testament begins from the sentence “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
And the Creation of seven days is written.
(The first day) God made light and darkness. And God called the light. Day, and the darkness he called Night.
(The second day) God made sky and made the ground and the sea.
(The third day) God produced a plant, a fruit tree, the trees and plants.
(The fourth day) God made the sun, the moon, a star.
(The fifth day) God made all creatures which were in the sea and made all birds with a wing.
(The sixth day) God created all animals which lived in the ground. And God created a person and created it to a man and woman last
And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them…
Love House is a house for a couple. On a very small site of 33 square meters of frontage 3.3m / 10m deep, I planned a building of frontage 2.7m / about 9m deep. I draw the biggest curve on there with width and depth of a building, I distributed a place of a roof and a place of a sky with the curve、And I planned the stairs which went up from the first floor to the second floor with this curve. The main space of the building which these created, it is it with the space that it “is not inside, and is not the outside”.
Sunlight shows the change from early morning to the evening very clearly to this space. This space without a lighting equipment turns into space where the light of some candles and the darkness of night live together. On a rainy day, a rainy curtain appears along a curve of a roof. When it rains, it is not always the same sound.
Quiet rain, intense rain, rain with wind … rain create various sounds. Light of the sun and moonlight play in the Love House, and rain and wind visit Love House, and birds and insects visit a tree and a fruit tree of Love House.
The situations differ every day. We can know that all nature given on the earth is prepared in very small Love House. A couple chose coexistence with all things to visit Love House and they decided not to put television to enjoy this rich space.
Love House does not separate inside and the outside. I discovered the new space that it “is not inside, and is not outside”. And Love House was made.
Our sense and instinct may continue still having the thing which the human felt at the time of the Creation. I have a feeling that Love House can remind us of them.
