Introducing Kamiooka Nagaya, a custom-built home example by Takayoshi Nakamura Architects & Associates, a Architect / Design office in 4-26-27 Utsukushigaoka, Aoba-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa

A fully separated two-family house planned for a residential area with significant changes in elevation along a railway line. Under the Building Standards Act, its use is classified as a row house. Since the site has roads on both its east and west sides, we proposed a fully separated two-family house with separate approaches, allowing a certain degree of distance between the two households while also anticipating the possibility of converting one of the spaces into a rental unit in the future. A shared passage that also serves as a service entrance makes it easy for the two households to move between one another.

The first floor is occupied by the parents’ household. The level differences have been minimized, and it features a gallery that functions both as a corridor and as a garden connected to the LDK. The second floor is occupied by the younger family, including energetic children. It has a spacious deck in place of a garden, taking advantage of the elevated site to provide expansive views. A skylight was installed in the second-floor deck to bring light down into the parents’ living room below. At night, the arrangement works in reverse: the light from the parents’ living room filters up through the skylight, serving as a garden light for the second-floor deck. When that light goes out, it signals bedtime. The children can be reminded to be considerate of the floor below: “Grandpa and Grandma have gone to bed, so let’s be quiet.”

In this way, we sought to supplement through the “software” of the residents’ awareness the sound insulation performance against heavy impact noise, which tends to be inherently insufficient in timber construction. Structure: Two-story timber construction + existing basement reinforced-concrete garage
Total floor area: 222.96 m² (67.45 tsubo)
Site area: 291.83 m² (88.28 tsubo)