HAUS IN KOYAMANISHIMOTOMACHI

This renovation transforms a Kyo-machiya filled with memories of the client’s late aunt into a high-quality rental property, passing its heritage to the next generation rather than selling it. The narrow, private alley serving as the approach was once overgrown with dense foliage. By carefully thinning the greenery to create a crisp landscape and installing a new wall to conceal the neighbor’s aluminum fence, the path was redefined. Furthermore, aligning with construction next door, the adjacent rusted metal wall was successfully replaced with traditional charred cedar (Yakisugi). Blending utility, structural integrity, and aesthetic grace, this refined alley establishes an evocative sequence that builds anticipation for the space within.

At the dead end of the private alley, where a bleak aluminum-framed entrance once stood, a wooden veranda (Engawa) was introduced to afford a gentle pocket for neighborly interaction. By shifting the main entrance from the front to the side of the path, the design fosters a sense of subtle modesty while successfully securing a cohesive dining and kitchen layout inside. The partition separating the alley and the kitchen features repurposed antique doors, seamlessly blending into the aesthetic; because both doors slide completely into the wall, the space can be thrown wide open to the outdoors. On the interior side, a single, large movable Shoji screen allows residents to fluidly calibrate the intake of natural daylight and seasonal ventilation.

Reinventing the property as a rental house required non-negotiable baselines: entirely replacing the plumbing fixtures and rectifying the tilted floors. However, the available budget was strictly capped to avoid placing an undue financial burden on the client. The response to this financial constraint was a meticulous scrutiny of the existing structure and a strategy of subtraction. By minimizing interventions in the garden-facing Japanese rooms on both floors—which were in relatively good condition—construction costs were drastically contained. This was not a mere compromise; by sharp discerning the latent potential of the house, the design successfully preserved the rich patina and poetic atmosphere woven by time.

To accommodate the request for three private rooms on the second floor, the layout was dynamically overhauled, erasing any trace of the original four-and-a-half-mat room while preserving fragments of the historic earthen walls in the hall. Despite the deep, landlocked nature of the site, natural light drawn from the private alley and the garden softy suffuses each bedroom. To tightly control budget while enhancing spatial texture, every antique door within the house was meticulously audited. Doors originally separated across the first and second floors were cross-combined; leveraging the inherent logic of traditional modular architecture, their heights were precisely adjusted by adding timber extensions to the stiles. This thoughtful reinterpretation unlocks the true adaptability of wooden joinery, weaving ancestral wisdom into a contemporary lifestyle.

Evidently a later addition, the second-floor Western room was a relic—roughly built, structurally tilted, and marred by peeling plywood. The design overhauled this forgotten space, resurrecting it into a sunlit bedroom. A deliberate strategy of Merihari (sharp contrast) was employed: leaving the alley-facing antique doors intact while simply re-papering the hall-side Fusuma screens to intertwine old and new. The transformed hall seeks a "sweet spot" where clean linden plywood resonates with historic earthen walls. A custom shelf concealing electrical wiring, a dynamic overhang above the stairs, and a vanity with plumbing confined within a single floorboard—the accumulation of these microscopic operations quietly anchors the spatial equilibrium.

Carefully considering lines of sight from the new bathroom and vanity, the original garden was reconfigured. Intricate adjustments—such as refining the exposed faucet of the water basin and rearranging the stone layout—resurrected its poetic atmosphere. Overgrown trees that overwhelmed the scale of the garden were thinned and pruned. This intervention successfully filled the living room—which previously required artificial daylight even during the day—with pleasant natural light. By updating the garden wall with bright cedar bark and replacing the old veranda chassis with custom wooden doors, the design refuses to treat the garden as an isolated landscape, seamlessly transforming the indoor environment and the visual experience from within.