Remember when they say never to judge a book by its cover? Well, here’s a tiny house that makes a huge impression, once you look inside! This tiny house is only 594 sq ft but manages to have a living room, bedroom, storage room, a playroom for kids, and a loft. Don’t believe us? Let’s go inside –
Designed by Architect Kota Mizuishi, of Mizuishi Architect Atelier, the house has been constructed on a tiny triangular plot.
As Tokyo is one of the most expensive and overcrowded cities, buying an ideal plot gets difficult. You will find houses in difficult patches of land. It also encourages Japanese architects to create impressive and ingenious buildings.
The 594-square-foot house seems quite narrow and small from the outside but it is surprisingly more spacious from the inside than you’d expect.
It has two floors, with the bedroom on the first floor, the kitchen and living room on the second, plus a little family playroom on a mezzanine level accessible through a staircase.
The owners of this house wanted to build a house but they didn’t have a big budget. And so, they visited Mizuishi’s office nearby. However, there were a lot of challenges apart from the narrowness of the plot. They had to get a special permit as the house didn’t exactly fit into the Japanese building laws.
The architect of this house had to consider a lot before designing it. As the house had a narrow structure it was prone to earthquakes. But if they added too many pillars, the owners wouldn’t have gotten the interior space they required. It was quite a dilemma.
After a lot of considerations, they decided that the structure would be reinforced internally with small, load-bearing walls. It helped in dividing the interior into zones. And this seemingly tiny house even has a parking space, imagine!
“I was a bit surprised when I was asked to make space for a car on this tiny lot. It’s limited to a mini-vehicle, but I was able to make room here,” Mizuishi says
The house now nestles between a small lane and the river-bank promenade. “We cut off the sharp corners of the site’s triangle and placed windows on those sides, so we can see the river from three sides of the house,” the owners say.
“When I start to design, I definitely want to create something of value,” Mizuishi says. And he has certainly done that!
Image credits: Mizuishi Architects Atelier
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