This house in Fukuyama, completed by Japanese studio UID Architects, is composed of four separate blocks clad in black-stained cedar.

Square openings in the exterior walls of the Tsumuji+Hako house reveal covered walkways that connect each of the buildings, which include one single-storey house, one two-storey house, and two garage blocks.

The theme of square openings is repeated in the windows to the two individual residences, where two generations of one family reside.

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Here’s some more text from the architects:

Project Description

This is a two-family house for the couple and their parents.

It is not a normal form to contain two families in one building but composed by the four boxes of two houses and each garages in the large site of about 500㎡.

The tsumuji (the crossroad) composed of placement of these four boxes become the approach to the site and the line of flow to the terrace, and it is intended that a new connection of the community is created by the space like the alley.

About part of houses, one-story and two-story house are about 100㎡.

It is the form that the parents’ one-story house (type A) has the double structure that established the hollow atmospheric layer in the garret, and considered the thermal environment of the interior space.

On the other hand, the two-story house (type B) has one-room living space through a large rectangular void in upper part of it.

At the tsumuji (the crossroad), the scenery which community spreads by meeting and talking is the daily scenery of the town at the crossroad where this site located in.

This project is the suggestion to live while opening for a city and keeping a sense of distance of each other's private lives by the two-family house of the separate type.

Name project: tsumuji+hako
Architects: UID architects – Keisuke Maeda, Toru Shigehiro, Hiromi Ishiguro
Consultants: K-style – Kouso Katayama, mechanical; Toshiya Ogino Environment Design Office – Toshiya Ogino, Yasunori Aoki, landscape
General contractor: Home Co., Ltd.－Akihiro Hosoya, Masaki Sakamoto
Structural system: Timber structure
Used materials: Cedar, exterior; diatomite, wallpaper, plaster board, interior

Site area: typeA: 288.38㎡, type B: 266.76㎡
Built area: typeA: total 127.62㎡ / house area 91.62㎡ garage area 36.00㎡, typeB: total 111.03㎡ / house area 64.83㎡ garage area 46.20㎡
Total floor area : typeA: total 116.82㎡ / house area 80.82㎡ garage area 36.00㎡, typeB: total 154.50㎡ / house area 108.30㎡ garage area 46.20㎡
Date of completion: November, 2010