Japanese-Australian architecture studio Atelier Luke has renovated an old Kyoto row house, giving the narrow home a black-stained timber ceiling to create "a spacious void of shadows".
Named Terrace House near Demachiyanagi, the home has a historic facade that Atelier Luke restored while bringing contemporary Japanese and Australian design sensibilities into the interior.
Above: Atelier Luke has restored an old row house. Top image: it occupies a narrow plot in Kyoto
The studio started the project by stripping the house back to its structure, revealing previously hidden roof beams that they chose to make into a feature.
Perhaps counterintuitively, they did so by staining the timber of the upper storey and ceiling black.
The studio stripped the house back to its structure "Spaciousness is created within this small home through darkness as well as light," said Atelier Luke.
"Internally the black-stained timber skeleton, including previously concealed roof beams, creates a spacious void of shadows within which the new home is formed," it continued.
"Shadows extend almost infinitely above whilst the ground plane extends into the street, blurring the bounds of the small plot."
Two prominent cedar boxes have been inserted
Within this structure, the studio inserted two prominent cedar boxes, "almost as furniture". The front box contains the bathroom and the kitchen with an elevated sleeping loft above.
The rear box functions to pr...