Dezeen Magazine

The Floor of Atsumi by 403architecture

The Floor of Atsumi by 403architecture

Japanese studio 403architecture laid the patchwork floor of this bedroom using timber stripped from the ceiling.

The Floor of Atsumi by 403architecture

The offcuts vary in colour and size, and are arranged at random to create a subtly bumpy surface.

The Floor of Atsumi by 403architecture

Unlike the other rooms of the Hamamatsu apartment, the bedroom’s floor is not varnished, but simply sanded smooth.

The Floor of Atsumi by 403architecture

The ceiling above remains unfinished, with ducts and electrical cables left exposed.

The Floor of Atsumi by 403architecture

This is the second project by 403architecture that we've featured recently - see our earlier story about an apartment with drawers in the floor.

The Floor of Atsumi by 403architecture

Photography is by Kenta Hasegawa.

The Floor of Atsumi by 403architecture

The text below is from 403architecture:


The Floor of Atsumi

The Floor of Atsumi by 403architecture

This project is for the floor in Hamamatsu, Japan.

The Floor of Atsumi by 403architecture

The client who are young couple asked us to repair the bedroom which is in the timeworn apartment house located in the central city area. This plan was advanced while linking the repair of the different rooms performed at the same time.

The Floor of Atsumi by 403architecture

The ceiling was dismantled to secure enough hight with fanctional converting kitchen into walk-in closet and others. Because we got a enough amount of "scrap wood", we decide to make a new floor by that was ceilings. We cut various sectional woods finely and spread it all over the floor as a substitute for a tatami mat. Each woods varied in colors across the ages, but all surface is cutting plane. That means this floor is old at the same time new. There are errors of cutting precision and human sole can feel negligible skew of 3D curved surface which was ground smooth by the disc sander. This floor is hard to happen warpage and breaking and it is superior in noise barrier performance.

The Floor of Atsumi by 403architecture

In this project, we connected destruction and construction directly, by falling the ceiling to the floor.