U-RESIDENCE

This project is the renovation of a single unit of about 70 square meters in an ordinary apartment building in the heart of Dogo Onsen. The clients are a couple in their late fifties who moved their base from Tokyo to Matsuyama, the wife's hometown, while continuing a lifestyle spread across multiple homes. They had already remodeled the kitchen and blinds of the LDK (living, dining, and kitchen) to their taste, so there we only added wall storage and replaced the wallpaper. The remaining 40 square meters or so were stripped back to the bare structure and completely renovated. What the couple asked for was a refined living space with the feel of a contemporary luxury hotel.

The core of the plan was to transform the hallway, normally no more than a passage, into a private gallery that serves as the "spine" of the home. Tableware and artworks that the travel-loving couple have collected in many places, along with the books of the husband, an avid reader, are arranged on glass shelves and brought out by indirect light spilling from the shelves' lower edges and along the floor. A place one would simply pass through has been reborn as the center of daily life, tracing memories of the many times and places in the couple's lives. In the walk-in closet, built-in storage incorporates the drawers of a cherished kimono chest. To create as much sense of openness as possible within the limited floor area, the existing partitions were sorted into those to be kept, those to be removed, and those to be replaced with glass, enhancing the continuity of the space.

Materials and lighting played a major role in creating the hotel-like atmosphere. Large-format dark gray tiles with a refined texture run without interruption across partitions from the entrance through the gallery and bedroom to the washroom, where the same tiles also clad the walls. Together with black-framed glass doors and a split-face stone wall, they give the space a minimal, unified presence. The lighting keeps overall brightness lower than in a typical home and emphasizes the shadows created by indirect light. Light reflected in the surfaces of tile, glass, and mirror lends the space depth and texture, creating a rich experience beyond its actual dimensions. The lightness and saturation of the secondary spaces, the gallery, bedroom, and bathrooms, were kept low in order to heighten the brightness and openness of the white LDK, the main stage of daily life and its place for special occasions.

Most Japanese apartments are built with standardized layouts such as 2LDK or 3LDK, designed for the "average" household. The positions of bathrooms and toilets are also tied to the building's overall services and are difficult to move significantly in a renovation. Within these constraints, this project relocated and enlarged the wet areas as far as possible, while carefully interpreting the residents' lifestyle and values and giving them form as a refined space. It is also an attempt to show a way of living tailored to the individual, different from the "standard" defined by real estate conventions.