Open Sky House
This is a small house for a family of five, a couple and three children. Land prices in the city are expensive and there is a system of blatant disparities depending on location and buildable area. Even the land they managed to acquire was a harsh reality, as only a small house (61 square meters of allowable gross floor area) could be built on, with a maximum of 12 square meters per person.
Photography by © Yasuhiro Nakayama
However, in order to escape from the logic of such an urban economy, the family chose to live without a roof over half of their house, an unknown and bold choice(In Japan, the portion with a roof is counted as floor area). So in this house, nearly half of the house’s area, including the “living room,” is without a roof. As a result, everyday life here is exposed to the sky, the only and overwhelming nature of the city. Inside the house, it rains, and the wind blows in. It snows and the bugs come. Every day of it is exposed to an unpredictable world, which must be hard to understand for those who think of their homes as assets and tools.
Photography by © Yasuhiro Nakayama
But the family enjoys this life with glee. They use the fittings of a yacht and sling sheets of sun (and sometimes rain protection) like sails, and they enjoy the freedom that only this house can provide. The children run around with umbrellas on heavy rainy days, build a pool on hot days, and curl up in sleeping bags under the night sky with their fri...