The Hōsho House project was conceived based on the specific needs of the future residents, who required a high degree of privacy due to a previous robbery and its location in a traditional neighborhood near the city's historic center.
The clients wished to avoid any feeling of exposure or vulnerability, which led to the search for a discreet and austere design in terms of ornamentation. To ensure security within the residence, high walls were implemented, and the number of windows facing the street was minimized.
The building is distributed across two adjacent lots, but the condition imposed was to build the house on only one of them. This ensured that, should one of the plots need to be sold in the future, the house would remain autonomous. Thus, one lot was dedicated to a large garden, while the other served for the construction of the residence.
Due to this arrangement, the house offers only glimpses of the main garden. Each internal area connects in a regulated manner to internal patios, allowing natural light to enter and establishing unique environments that evolve throughout the day. The internal path is narrow, generating a sense of compression, where the light becomes subtly flooding on the floor and walls, overcoming the gloom.
Subsequently, the boundary between the interior and the exterior dissolves. The house expands and opens up, and the exterior reappears, but viewed from the intimacy of the interior itself. One of the patios frames a section of the sky, bringing it closer and integrating it almost as a decorative element of the house.
A calm and organized internal landscape was created so that the bedrooms could enjoy complete freedom from the external environment, while maintaining strictly controlled views, given that the house is situated between neighboring buildings. This internal landscape, materialized in a terrace, functions as an extension of the living room and bedroom on the ground floor, promoting a smooth transition to the exterior. The cantilevered walls serve to protect against the southwest sun while fostering a feeling of warmth and privacy before opening up to the main garden.
The design team believes that true innovation lies not in adding more elements, but in rediscovering what is essential, something that excessive sophistication had made them forget.