Japanese architecture studio Takeshi Hosaka Architects has completed a mini house in a narrow plot in Tokyo, Japan, to test how it makes us feel to live in a minimum space with everything needed. 

Named Love2 House, the architects designed this house for themselves - to live with his wife to experience the requirements of minimalism once more. 

"Love2 House was created through fighting "infiniteness of small things" logically and sensuously to become something like fiction and fact," said the architect.

"I lived in “Love House” in Yokohama for 10 years. I started to teach as a professor in Waseda University Art and Architecture School since 2015. There is about 40km distance from Love House to the university and it was so hard to commute for 3hours by train almost everyday."

"That’s the reason I decided to construct my second house ,”Love2 House”. I got 31,41m2 lot in Tokyo and immediately started to design 2 stories house," added he architect in a project description.

The house is a single-story building but divided into major parts to live, work and sleep. The front side of the house directly communicates with the street and the back side opens to the garden. The key component of the house is its roof, made of curved roof tops, directly takes the sunlight and makes the space larger as it was.

"As I experienced every earth components, for instance, sunshine, rain, snow, animal, plants and people, during my life in “Love House”, I focused on eternity of small space which posses everything in," added Takeshi Hosaka. 

"The ancient Roman place importance on 5 components as ideal life in villa; Learning, Bath, Drama, Music and Epicurism. I desired to enrich these 5 components in this small house of 18.84m2."

"We do enjoy to take a bath every night, to listen 300 collections of disc record, to eat rice boiled in earthen pot, and read the favored books. Besides, we rely on the Bible when we get tired as Kamo no Chomei mentioned in Hojoan about religion as one of the key components in one’s life."

The house has a direct connection to nature and town. The sunlight simulation showed that the site can not obtain direct sunshine for 3 months in the winter. It really made the architect disappointed at first but he shifted to conceive this fact as a similar environment to Scandinavian country. 

"This concept leaded me to draw the sketch of two curved roofs tops of which are open to the sky.In the winter, the two skylights effectively take soft sunlight into the house. In the summer the house is filled with brilliant sunshine like tropical country. We could feel sunlight of all over the world throughout the year."

The roof is composed of two HP shells.They are merged at different heights and create a simple house shape. The eaves of the roof shells shape straight to blend with the surroundings but the top of the shells are slightly curved. The seven short walls derived from the main RC skeleton separate the three zones: dining, kitchen and bedroom.

The thickness of these walls is decreased for 15mm from top to bottom to install the shelf boards and the kitchen counter. The RC skeleton works not only as a big body but also as small furniture in this small house.

"When we keep the window facing on the street fully opened, passengers easily talk to us and children put their hands on the floor and look inside. We even pat strolling dogs from dining," added the architects.

"The front street has flower bed so we enjoy it as our garden. In this house we feel the town very close. We are really surprised how pleasant to communicate with the town is!."

"Infiniteness of small house. "Love2 House” was completed so that "Love House” turned to the atelier to draw pictures or the villa to spend weekends. My wife so much loves "Love House” and she had felt sad to leave there but now she has so much fun in "Love2 House". I am also fun. "Love2 House" was created through fighting "infiniteness of small things" logically and sensuously to become something like fiction and fact.

Site plan

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All images © KOJI FUJII / Nacasa&Partners Inc

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