Y-HOUSE

Y-HOUSE is a project for a villa with a music hall to be built at the foot of Mt. Yatsugatake.

Because the winter in this region is severe and cold enough to cause problems for the building from snowfall and icicles, a frost-damage-resistant, steeply pitched roof must be constructed. A pitched roof should have a structure that matches the planar shape of the building, so in order to build a simple pitched roof from which snow slides down the shortest distance, the building plan should be simple as well.

As long as this building has a music hall, the villa is expected to have a variety of different visitors other than the owner’s family. Because it needs to provide functions specific for accommodations and music concerts for multiple guests, a slightly discrete style in which the building maintains a more or less psychological distance according to each function is required. Such a composition tends to become complicated, and it is not easy to achieve both a discrete style and a simple roof at the same time; also, the estate, surrounded by woods, does not have a distinct orientation or outstanding scenery. Since the beautiful greenery extends in every direction, we thought that a building with a multidirectional character would be appropriate for this land.

Accordingly, we developed a proposal to fit the functions of the building into each simple plane and rectangular block and then to connect the rectangular blocks of the building at each corner to make an outward circle. This makes the building multidirectional as a whole, while each block maintains a corresponding distance from one another and faces in different directions to provide different views, though each block is in such a simple shape as to easily add a gable roof. At the same time, the building forms one big ring and is expected to reintegrate each function that is attempting to diverge with a unifying force that urges visitors to interact.