K-RESIDENCE Renovation

K-RESIDENCE Renovation is a renovation and landscape plan for a house designed by the architect Raku Endo, son of Arata Endo, known as a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, and himself a student of Wright. The project began when a couple who had lived in the house since its completion some twenty-odd years earlier came to us. Their children had grown up and left home, and they wanted to adapt the house to life as a couple now, and to their own aging in the years ahead.

The gist of their request was to "resolve the inconveniences felt in daily life, while making use of rooms left unused since the children moved out." At its core was the reconfiguration of the area around the bedroom, which faces a large garden with a small pool. The plan was to enlarge the bedroom and add what the house had never had: a study and hobby room for the husband, and a small family room for when the children and grandchildren come to visit. The couple also wanted to change the mood of the garden, once the children's lively playground, to suit their life today. Their only concrete requests for the garden were that it be easy to maintain and include a small vegetable garden.

When working on a building by an architect whose name has endured, one cannot ignore its history. We felt that taking what we gained from touching such a work directly and varying it, like a verse in renga linked poetry, is the duty and ethic of anyone who stands in the stream of architectural history, however small the job. At the head of the proposal, we placed Wright's words: "Reality of the building does not consist in the roof and walls, but in the space within to be lived in." They expressed our respect for the lineage running from Wright to Arata Endo and Raku Endo, and our resolve to take up their thinking in our own way.

The garden had an almost luxurious amount of space, yet it felt flat and lacked cohesion. What could give it order as a "garden" while keeping its free expanse? As we sketched again and again, the answer that felt right was the circular arc, a motif Wright often used for places where people gather.

The existing sunroom is removed, and an arcing roof of wooden louvers is set in its place, creating a half-outdoor deck terrace beneath it, like an engawa veranda. The pool gains a shallow section to become a deeper waterscape, gently surrounded by lawn, a vegetable garden, and evergreen trees. It is a form meant to celebrate the memory of this garden, where the family, the children and grandchildren at its center, once gathered in lively company. When its large windows are opened, the interior facing the garden becomes a garden living room continuous with the outside, turning instantly into a gathering place for three generations of the family. The somewhat plain handrail of the upstairs terrace was also to be replaced with panels that stylize the ridgeline of the Ishizuchi Mountains, visible from the house, in the manner of Wright's stained glass.

For various reasons, the project was suspended after the basic design was completed. We still hope that one day the family will gather again beneath this arc.