Bronze Interior Space and Exhibition Design · 2020
Continuous Plate House 2.0 Residence Renovation
by Ryumei Fujik and Yukiko Sato
- A' Design Award 2020 Bronze Winner in Interior Space and Exhibition Design
- Awarded April 15, 2020
- CLIENT: F.a.d.s
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 17,878
- Verification code 95F08D6F3A · Verify this award
About Continuous Plate House 2.0 Residence Renovation
This house has been renovated mainly on the first floor because 18 years the completion. The renovation required that the existing kitchen area, consisting of the kitchen, breakfast corner, and food storage, be changed to a space that can be used for various purposes. In order to respond to this demand, the food storage and corridors were eliminated, making the entire space one room wide, and the sink was changed from a wall-mounted type to an island type, making it a more space centered on the kitchen unit. It has been reborn as a calm and cozy room because it is covered with a wooden finish.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- The renovation required that the existing kitchen area, consisting of the kitchen, breakfast corner, and food storage, be changed to a space that can be used for various purposes, not just at breakfast. In order to respond to this demand, the food storage and corridors were eliminated, making the entire space one room wide, and the sink was changed from a wall-mounted type to an island type, making it a more space centered on the kitchen unit. It has been reborn as a calm and cozy family room.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The size of the Kitchen area is width:3.2m by hight:2.4m by depth:7m.
- Tags
- Residence Renovation, Kitchen, spruce CLT panel, Continuous Plate
- Production Technology
- The Kitchen area is covered with spruce CLT panels (made in Austria).
- Design Challenge
- How Break a Box-form Architecture: In the original project (Continuous Plate House 1.0), it began to think from a box form at first. Although the effective idea was not able to be found out easily, as a result of repeating whether there is any method of breaking that somehow, and trial and error, composition as if the floor, the wall, and the roof were connected continuously and bent and built one plate was obtained.
- Project Duration
- This house was first built in March 2001, and the renovation was completed in August 2019 in Fukui-city, Fukui Pref. in Japan.
- Research
- Response to a Heavy Snowfall: The principal focus of the original project (Continuous Plate House 1.0) was how we should design in response to a heavy snowfall. Since there are some examples of research that snow cannot lie easily due to the influence of a wind as for a flat roof if there is even no parapet, rather, we designed by adopting such a flat roof since 1999.
- Inspiration
- This house has been renovated mainly on the first floor because 18 years the completion. It is made by folding a plate, and a rectangular box made of concrete is inserted into it to support the whole. The outer surface of the box is finished with concrete cast in cedar board formwork, leaving the texture of wood even though it is concrete. In order to further strengthen the design concept at the completion, the entire inside of the box, that is, the kitchen area is covered with a wooden finish.
- Image Credits
- Image #1: Photographer Hiroshi Ueda
Image #2: Photographer Takeshi Taira
Image #3: Photographer Hiroshi Ueda
Image #4: Photographer Hiroshi Ueda
Image #5: Photographer Takeshi Taira
Colors of Continuous Plate House 2.0 Residence Renovation
Grand Interview about Continuous Plate House 2.0 Residence Renovation
The client's request for the renovation was to change the existing kitchen area, which consisted of a kitchen, breakfast corner, and pantry, into a multi-purpose family room-like space that could be used at any time, not just for breakfast.To meet this request, we removed the pantry to make the entire space a unified, spacious space, and changed the sink from a wall-mounted type to an island type, recreating the space more around the kitchen unit.
When the house was first completed, it was made of a single folded plate (slab), with a rectangular concrete box inserted between them to support the whole structure. The inside of this rectangular box was the kitchen area, and the surface of the box (the outer finished surface) was finished with exposed concrete in a cedar board formwork, so even though it was made of concrete, it retained the texture of wood.This time, in order to further implement the design concept at the time of the first completion, we decided to cover the inside of the box, i.e. the inside of the kitchen area, entirely with a wooden finish. Specifically, the walls and ceiling were finished with spruce CLT material (made in Austria), and the floors were made of birch wood with a similar texture.By unifying the interior with the same wooden materials, the family room space has been transformed into a calm, comfortable space.
As I answered in question 04, if you try to make a flat roof without a parapet, which is a roof shape that is less likely to accumulate snow due to the influence of wind, in order to cope with heavy snowfall conditions, the result is inevitably a box-shape.However, I believe that this box-shaped architecture is deeply connected to the concept of homogeneous space, which was the dominant spatial concept of the 20th century, and for many years I have been trying to find a way to overcome this somehow. This is because, to put it very simply, I believe that this concept of homogeneous space is such a big problem that it can be said to have caused global environmental problems.After much trial and error, by bending a single plate, I was able to find an architecture that had a flat roof without a parapet but was not box-shaped.
Although Fukui City is an urban area, it is a snowy area. Recently, due to the warm winters, there are many years when the amount of snowfall is relatively small, but in architectural design, 2 meters of snow must be taken into consideration. Moreover, it is heavy and wet snow. Many of the houses currently being built are built on the assumption that the human burden of "snow removal" will be required, but this is not just hard work, but also a dangerous task that can cost a life if one step is taken wrong. When designing, I want to at least create a building that does not require snow removal.With this in mind, I have tried several designs from the perspective of how to reflect snow in the design, and when designing this house, the first thing to consider was how to deal with snow. At this time, the shape of the roof is particularly important. Here, there are several research examples that show that if there is no parapet, a flat roof is less likely to accumulate snow due to the influence of the wind, and I adopted this idea in the design.This idea was successful, and despite years of snowfall, there were no structural problems, so there was no need to renovate the entire building. The only performance-wise improvement that was required was updating the facility equipment.
The area is now spacious and easy to use, and the layout centered around the island kitchen has brought the family closer together.
Before the renovation, the interior of the house was mainly exposed concrete, which lacked warmth, but by finishing the kitchen area entirely with wooden materials, the warmth has been enhanced and the quality of both the concrete and wood materials can be felt.
The skeleton-infill concept is key, and being able to freely renovate the interior without changing the structure is important in terms of sustainability.
The dimensions of the area were determined by the size of the exposed concrete box that was originally constructed with cedar board formwork.
There weren't many technical requirements for this renovation, so the decision was made based solely on aesthetic considerations.
I believe that the main reason for the success of this project was that we were able to find a good client, so to be honest, at this point I don't know if there is anything I can say in general terms about the future.