A simple gabled form clad in corrugated metal encloses a porous series of internal and exterior spaces at this house near Tsukimiyama Station in Kobe by Tato Architects.
Tato Architects designed the home in Kobe, Japan, around a large covered courtyard, which divides living spaces from a bathroom annex. Rather than make strict distinctions between these three elements they have been designed to merge together.

At the centre of the home the covered courtyard acts as an "inner garden", while outside an "outer courtyard" has been sandwiched between the new house and its neighbours.
Tato Architects' founder Yo Shimada designed the house to merge the interior with the gardens. To create the form he recalled visiting a house while studying at university that featured a courtyard that had simply been patted down and left to grow. "The design made it difficult to decide where the garden ended and the interior began," said Shimada.

Informed by this idea, the architecture studio describe the home's outdoor spaces as areas which can be "inside or outside depending on the furniture".

"By distributing the rectangular planes on the L-shaped site, we positioned the living space between the outer courtyard, which has the character of an inner courtyard surrounded by neighbouring buildings, and the inner garden," explained the studio.

To the northern end of the site, the living, kitchen and dining space occupies the ground floor of the ...