S House Renovation / Yasuhiro Sawa Design Office

As the owner is a designer, his office is located on the north side of the building, and the north side of the first floor is open to the town. The south side of the building had a dated façade, both good and bad, and the interior layout of the building could be imagined from the façade, which made it look older. Therefore, we followed the design code of the shopping arcade on the north side of the building, and from the south side, we were conscious of the gap between the building and its surroundings.

For the first floor, we laid out the necessary rooms (positive) while keeping in mind the rooms without names (negative), and adjusted the balance of negatives and positives by planning a geometric shape rather than a simple rectangle. In general, the walls that face the outside air are called exterior walls, and those that do not are called interior walls. In this case, all the walls were positioned as exterior walls.

The second floor was planned in the same way, with the children’s room as the “positive” and the rest of the living room as the “negative”. The public nature of the shopping street on the north side of the building is linked to the (negatives) on each floor, and I believe that this closed but open space has created a positive way of living.