Tato Architects / Yo Shimada

House in Kamakura

Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan

Location

Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan

Principal use

Personal residence

Family

Couple + 2 children

Design

Tato Architects / Yo Shimada, Sayaka Kawahara

Structural engineer

tmsd / Takashi Manda, Mitsuru Kobayashi, Ryosuke Kasuga

Contractor

Hayama Koumuten

Structure

Timber

Foundation

Mat foundation

Number of stories

3 stories

Eaves height

7,750mm

Maximum height

7,830mm

Site area

235.12㎡

Building area

46.13㎡

Total floor area

114.74㎡ (1st & 2nd floor: 42.84㎡ / 3rd floor: 29.06㎡)

Like a Toolbox

The site lies within walking distance of Kamakura Station, on the boundary between wooded hills and a residential neighborhood, and its chief attraction was the cedar-covered hill rising directly behind it. Carved into its sandstone slope are yagura — artificial caves excavated in the Kamakura period as memorial chapels — and a variety of plants, including myoga ginger, grow wild there. As the hill lies outside the designated urbanization area, no building can be erected on it. Yet the clients — a book designer and friend from university days, his partner, an editor, and their children — were drawn to the site, and envisioned using the hill and the plot together as one continuous garden. Given their way of living and the atmosphere of the place, we set out to build a house for a calm, unhurried life — one that they could use like a toolbox.

Despite the idyllic setting, however, the site came with numerous constraints. Landscape ordinances strictly regulated form, color, and height, while a retaining wall, a large rainwater infiltration tank, and a rockfall-prevention fence left only limited ground to build on. Furthermore, it emerged that early-modern archaeological remains lay just 30 centimeters below the surface; a full excavation survey would have demanded prohibitive time and cost, and had to be avoided.

We therefore joined two mono-pitched volumes at a corner, following the shape of the site, to form an L-shaped plan. One wing gathers the more open and communal spaces — a guest room, the kitchen and dining area — while the other concentrates quieter ones such as the bedroom, compressed into three low-ceilinged levels. Where the two mono-pitched roofs meet at the corner, they compose the silhouette of a house. The wall facing the hill became one long bookshelf. At the center of the plan — which might be likened to a book lying open — a triangular stairwell and decks connect the floors, the two arms of the L, and inside with outside. The second-floor deck aligns with a level clearing on the hill; the space beneath it serves as a work area, and the back of the bedroom is a storeroom for farming tools.

A year into their life here, the family relies on a rainwater tank and minimal electricity, living almost entirely without air conditioning thanks to natural ventilation. Growing their vegetable garden from seed and tending the woods on the hill, they say the garden will take another decade or more to complete.

The Japanese word niwa (garden) is said to derive from “a place of earth,” originally denoting the ground around a house where daily work and rituals took place. True to that etymology, this garden — unlike the English “garden,” rooted in gherdh, “to enclose” — is not greenery to be admired but a place of activity, thoroughly inhabited and worked.

The dead-end street in front has become the children’s favorite playground, and their territory seems to stretch from the hill behind the house all the way to the nearest station. For the children, perhaps, the whole town feels like their garden.