Architecture as Background
This project is the renovation of a two-family residence located within the precincts of a shrine in Ichinomiya City, Aichi Prefecture. A key question in the design process was how to position the relationship between the shrine and the residence (which also functions as the shrine office), and how to reorganize the cluster of houses (shrine office dwellings) that had been added to and expanded over many years. Ultimately, the two houses targeted for renovation, with their complex rooflines, were unified under a flat roof, simultaneously providing seismic reinforcement and consolidating them into a single building. By connecting the densely built, long-accumulated group of houses with a simple structural framework, the design restructured the balance of density and openness in the site, creating an architecture that plays the role of a background to the place.

Reorganizing Space while Preserving Traces of Life
The household consists of a couple in their 50s, the husband’s mother, and their two children. The client had two main requests: to brighten the dim interiors of the tightly packed existing houses, and to secure privacy in the residence that also serves as a shrine office. Based on these requests, we sought to create a new environment suited for a family entering a new life stage, while preserving the flow and domains shaped by long years of living in the house. Specifically, we visualized three domains—the shrine office, the mother’s space, and the couple’s household—with an L-shaped wooden wall. The existing sequence of rooms connected by corridors was reorganized into a large living space that links the mother’s and the couple’s domains. The shrine office was relocated into a detached-like Japanese-style room, separated by a passage garden that doubles as the approach to the entrance, ensuring privacy from the residence. In addition, high-side and top lights that bring daylight into the bathroom area and along the L-shaped wall, together with the passage garden that cuts into the volume, create bright interior spaces. By reorganizing the layout while preserving traces of daily life that might otherwise disappear in the creation of new space, we were able to produce an atmosphere of gentle, calm novelty.