YU Momoeda Architects

This is a renovation project of a house that was built more than 40 years ago. After conducting a seismic diagnosis of the existing three-story reinforced concrete frame structure, unnecessary floor slabs were removed and thermal insulation was added. A “nest” that contains the family’s private rooms was then suspended within the column-and-beam framework, as if parasitically attached to it.

The area surrounding the nest forms a three-dimensional common space, where the family can sense each other’s presence through the “inner veranda” provided in each private room. The nest also functions as an environmental device, allowing light, wind, and conditioned air to circulate across the three levels.

As time passed and social conditions changed since the building’s original construction, a gap emerged between the dwelling and the residents’ way of life. The building had become too large for the now smaller family unit, and thus it needed to be made more compact. In response, the design sought potential in the act of subtraction—reducing what had been excessively built, creating new spaces while dismantling old ones, and discovering unexpected spatial possibilities born from this metabolic process of renewal.

At a time when the creation of entirely new architecture is becoming less visible, we aim to confront various social issues head-on and to discover new spatial possibilities within their distortions.

Floating NestWestern Japan 2024