Air before open plan
House in Takaido renovates a roughly sixty-year-old one-storey wooden dwelling in Tokyo’s Suginami ward. Takeshi Yamagata Architects did not gut the house into a loft. They cut a semi-outdoor terrace into the centre of the plan and buffered it with kazamado mesh screens — light and air restored without erasing the white-and-green character the owners valued.
Tokyo summers are hot and humid; older wooden houses stagnate when rooms stay subdivided. Opening the centre and fitting operable screens turns the dwelling into a ventilated semi-outdoor environment when sliding doors are open. South-side screens open fully; the street-side screen mediates privacy.
The renewed house combines light and airy living spaces with the original timber features — past and present in one continuous fabric.
— Paraphrase from project coverage, Designboom / Domus
The terrace as social hinge
The owners needed contemporary living and space for work-related visitors, while retaining crafted furniture and fixtures. The old reception room — once a music lesson room — became a semi-public living room. The terrace is the agreement between public and private: guests arrive into light without exposing bedrooms and kitchen as a single open loft.
Preserving cabinets, lights and wall furniture was part of the brief’s emotional contract, not a styling afterthought. Removing the old street fence and adding planting softens the public edge without air-conditioning as the first response.
Seismic work, quiet in the photographs
At 90 m² on a rare freestanding 185 m² lot, the structural upgrade is central to the brief even when it is quiet in published images. Tokyo renovations of this age must earn continued life structurally before they earn it spatially. Constructor Stylekoubou; consultants Stylekoubou and Komorebi Design. Kazamado screens pick up the existing palette so the new layer feels related, not foreign.
Exterior finish is removed at the terrace so the mesh becomes the new skin. Sliding doors allow the house to expand or contract with season and occupancy — climate infrastructure and social buffer in one hinge.
Sources
Research drawn from published project documentation. Photography credits are for attribution only — images on this page are placeholders until rights are cleared.
