I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Takaharu Tezuka of Tezuka Architects give a lecture at UPenn recently. Tezuka is one of my favorite Japanese firms that has been producing amazing homes for about two decades and is getting into some interesting larger commercial commissions as they have grown in the past 5-10 years. If you’ve been around this blog for a while, you probably have seen some of their work in our inspirational posts. Tezuka’s lighting designs gave us confidence that the bare CFL’s in our homes would not only work, but look better than most traditional recessed lighting layouts.

You’ll notice in the picture of the Tezuka’s above that they are wearing blue and red. One of the interesting and quirky things about them is they always wear the same thing. Mr. Tezuka said he has about 100 of the same blue shirt that also comes in long sleeve versions. He wears blue every day, while his wife wears red, his daughter wears yellow and his son has claimed the color green. They are making me revisit my desire to simplify my life by going out and buying 20 of the same grey t-shirt.

On to the architecture. Below I wanted to quickly highlight the three projects that Tezuka spoke about in his lecture.

The Roof House

The first project is one of their most famous works titled “The Roof House.” The most interesting thing about this house was the overall approach to the design. The Tezuka’s visited the family’s current house when they were hired to design them a new home. The first thing the family showed them was a very small and quite steep tiled roof section that they could access through a small window. The entire family, including the small children would climb out on this roof almost daily to spend time together eating meals or just chatting.

This visit inspired the Tezuka’s to build a very modest house that was all about the roof. You can see below that the living quarters are very small and minimalist which is fairly standard in Japanese architecture. The big difference is the enormous roof that includes a mini kitchen, a fireplace and even a shower. The family can access the roof through a series of small ladders and skylights, mimicking the method of entry to their old roof through a small window.

This house reminded me a bit of how many of us live in tight quarters in Philly and other dense cities in the US. We often have a very modest flat or rowhome with a tiny outdoor yard, balcony or roof deck that can capture the majority of our free time when the weather’s nice. It’s interesting to see this concept taken to the extreme in The Roof House.

Fuji Kindergarten

I think this Fuji Kindergarten was my favorite of the three works Tezuka presented and one I had not seen before. There were a hodgepodge of buildings on this site that made up a kindergarten with a somewhat secluded and gloomy playground area. With Tezuka’s new design everything about the site and those that interacted with it transformed. The way the children learned and played was transformed and vastly improved. The public is also attracted and invited onto the round deck on a daily basis to enjoy a site that they would’ve probably passed by without noticing in the past. To me, this building project represents a lot of the reasons we got into development. We don’t just want to develop buildings that look cool and lower utility bills. We want to transform the way people live, work and socialize. We’re working on the first of those three now and hope to get to the others sooner than later.

This building is basically a giant doughnut. What’s unique about the interior space is that there are no dividing walls whatsoever between the classes. There is movable furniture and organizers that can be re-arranged to alter the classrooms as needed. The children are not distracted by what’s going on in the center of the building or the noise from there fellow classmates in the next section over. They learn to work in a typical environment at a young age. Another positive impact that the new building has had on the way the children learn is the flexibility of the classes. If a child is getting bored, behind or ahead in one class, they are free to move on to another class in the building. This keeps things interesting for the children, keeps them learning and ensures nobody is falling into a rut in their learning and social development.

Woods of Net

The Woods of Net pavilion replaced an old pavilion that held this unique piece of artwork. Daily attendance rose from 20 people per day to over 4,000. ‘Nuff said.

Tezuka has many other projects listed on their site. It’s very much worth a couple of minutes searching through for inspiration. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Recently, we were approached by someone to design and build a small duplex on a tight infill house in Philadelphia. Without getting into too much detail, the lot is roughly 27′ wide by 20′ deep. Tight constraints to say the least. This footprint reminded us of one of our favorite Japanese small house designs – The 9 Tsubo House. Special thanks to our pals Justin and Greg from Materialicious for helping us dig up links to these homes.

image credit: designboom.com

Origins of the 9 Tsubo House

The 9 Tsubo House was originally designed and built by the late Japanese architect Masuzawa Makoto in 1952. The tsubo is a traditional Japanese unit of measure that equates to two tatami mats placed side by side. A tatami mat is roughly 3′ x 6′ so one tsubo would be 6′ x 6′ or 36 square feet. The 9 Tsubo house, therfore measured 18′ x 18′ for minimalist footprint of only 324 square feet. When a second floor loft is added the total square footage typically ranged from 500 – 540 square feet.

The reason for Makoto choosing these exact dimensions was based on a program offered by the houseing corporation of Japan after World War II. They would only provide loans to those people building a home of 50 square meters or less (~538 square feet). Anyone needing a larger house was assumed to be wealthy enough not to require a loan. Wouldn’t it be great if a US bank had a program like this incentivising people to build smaller homes?

Modern 9 Tsubo Houses by Boo-Hoo-Woo.com

In 2002 a company by the name of Boo-Hoo-Woo decided that this old 9 Tsubo House concept was pretty cool. They assembled 5 current Japanese designers to develop a line of homes all based on the original 9 Tsubo house by Mokoto a half century ago.

Currently there are 15 different models on the 9tubohouse.com site by 12 different designers (one is a husband & wife team). The site is in Japanese, but your Google toolbar will easily translate the majority into your language of choice. The company sells these homes online in Japan for between $120K – $200K. The craftmanship and attention to detail in every aspect of the homes is incredible. Below are some selected images from the site and sources used for this post. I highly recommend spending some time checking them out. Detailed floorplans and elevations are shown for most models.

SAH Type 1 Model

Kinoco Model

Basic Model

Kyuuheya Model

Tall Model

Tall NUDE Model

Source Links:

• 9tubohouse.com – Site of 15 modern versions of the 9 Tsubo House by various Japanese firms.
• Boo-Hoo-Woo.com – Company selling modern Tsubo Homes with fantastic name.
• Future House Now Post on 9 Tsubo Homes
• Space: Japanese Design Solutions for Compact Living – Great book featuring the 9 Tsubo House and other sweet Japanese designs.
• 9 Tsubo House with Kids from DaddyTypes.com
• Good article on origins of the 9 Tsubo House at Cup of Joe

I just wanted to point everyone listening to a great post by our good friend Gregory La Vardera over on his LamiDesign Modern House Plan Blog titled: “Carpe Diem – Why you should build your modern/green house now.” Greg has been promoting and writing about what he calls the ReModern Movement for years. The basic idea is that now is the time for modern homes to rise in production and availabilty beyond the pages of select magazines and blogs. This recent article is a plea for anyone who has every considered building a modern/green home to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the current market and build it today.

Here are some of my favorite lines from the post:

“Only if you could just go out and find/buy the kind of house you like. But you couldn’t. Its just not out there.”

“Well what has changed is the collective housing market is on its knees from the greatest gut kick in history, and the opportunity to remake the industry, or at least our little corner of it is at hand. We just have to take it.”

“…the time has never been better, whether that means more house for your budget, or an infeasible budget is now workable. Its not going to get any better than now.”

“Well now you have the power to make change, and if you are passionate about seeing the housing industry begin to offer the kind of housing you want, be it modern, or green, or both, now is the time to shape the future of housing. If everybody out there who ever hoped, dreamed, pined for a modern/green house got a project underway then modern green houses would suddenly be the majority of what was being built in housing. And you can be sure that everybody in the market would take notice. Builders and developers would see that this was something that was selling while nothing else was. People who never even had modern or green on their radar screen before would take notice, and be exposed to this new kind of house. Some will not care, but many more will come on board. And all this will combine to carve out a segment of the housing market for the kind of houses we love, so that in the future its not such a pipe dream to get a modern or green house. And even after the market recovers we can have staked out our part of it now.”

In reading Greg’s plea, we hear a lot of our own thoughts when we started this project almost two years ago. He hits on some great points that we make a lot now. One is that we never would have gotten the quality of builder that we did if it wasn’t for this down market where good builders are low on work.

Secondly, we built a modern and green home that was much more modest than the permanent home of our dreams. Will we live hear forever? Probably not, but we will enjoy every second of our new life in this “interim” home while building tremendous equity as the market returns to normal.

Lastly, I like how Greg points out that you and I can make a difference in this market. He is right when he tells us that other builders and developers will take notice of your unique and successful home. They are searching for something that works and they will find you. So, go read Greg’s post and then go build yourself a fine modern/green pad that you can be proud of. If nothing else, it will make for a great story to tell your grandkids.

It’s been a while since we updated our blogroll on the site here, so I thought I’d go through our collective Google Readers and see what blogs we’re now following that need to be added. Some are new to our daily inbox, while others have been there for months.

Unplgged – smarter homes, fewer wires. I just found this blog while reviewing the Top 25 Design & Architecture Blogs from Trends Updates. With our new found focus on everything home automation recently, we’ll be spending some time rummaging through the archives of this blog I’m sure.

BUILD Blog – The Modern List. Good blog on modern buildings that I’ve been following for some time. I like that these guys get into trends and the nitty gritty of modern construction details from time to time also.

Prefabcosm – The world of prefab and modular homes. Good blog of prefab. I’m adding them to the list even though they won’t publish my comments any more after reading my guest post on why prefab is not all it’s cracked up to be on Jetson Green.

Remodelista – We care about design in our lives. This is one of my favorite design blogs out there next to materialicious. Not sure how I haven’t added it till now.

Small House Style – Web mag dedicated to all things small house. Those close to me know I’m obsessed with small and/or tiny homes. This blog does a decent job of covering them.

Drexel Smart House Blog – better living through smart design and technology. Blog by some local students from Drexel detailing a green house remodel project they are working on.

Green Building Elements – projects, materials & design. That sums it up.

Sustainable Design Update – Emerging Sustainable Technology, Design, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy and Appropriate Technology. Bad tagline, but decent blog.

workalicious – the modern workplace, its furniture, implements and a bit of its culture. Brought to us by the talented folks at materialicious.

plastolux – design + interior. Just added this one today. Trying to add a few to the blogroll that focus a bit more on interior design of both homes and offices.

Philly Eco City – Local Living Economies Movement. Keeping tabs on the local Philly green movement. Hey, I like that tagline.

Design to Inspire – An Austrailian and a Canadian trying to inspire the world one room at a time. Another interior design oriented blog I added today.

Anyone have any other blogs they’ve found recently that you think the readers here at 100K might enjoy? Dump them in the comments. No spamming please. We’re not interested in your cousin’s blog specializing in canning and pickling.

Merry Christmas.

I love the look of the white stairway wall designed by ISA. It is clean, simple and modern without using expensive materials. At the same time, I struggle at times with the concept. I think the main thing is that I worry it will block too much of the light coming in from the windows placed above the door. It also seems a bit too sleek for our aesthetic and may take a bit away from the openness of the ground floor.

This could just be me though. I have been known to have design issues for no good reason. Lastly, for practical reasons, this drywall wall ending right at foot traffic level is most likely going to get beat up very quickly and could reflect poorly on our choices as a developer.

Over the weekend, I scoured the net and our past diagrams for some possible alternatives. We may end up just going with the design shown above, but I’d at least like to throw a few other options out there to see if anything strikes someone else’s fancy as well.

Arguably my favorite option is the use of an industrial cargo safety net by Lode Architects via Materialicious. I love the simplicity of this unique application with an industrial material. I could see a large net stretching from the ground floor all the way to the top of the ceiling on the second floor, running the entire length of the stair. This would eliminate a lot of material and labor in both the stair wall and the upstairs plywood and drywall clad railing. It should also pass code with no mods also which is convenient.

A similar approach would be to use wire mesh like we will be using on the green wall in the back of the homes.  If we were really clever, we could train some vines to climb their way up such a wall to create an interior green wall. This makes me a bit nevous for both cost and indoor humidity reasons though.

Let’s also not forget ISA’s original concept that had a unique plywood wall following the stair all the way up and seamlessly integrating with the railing on the second floor. Very nice, but possibly more expensive than the drywall idea with some of the same light blocking issues as we have now.

Lastly, we could always eliminate the wall altogether. This has obvious code violations as well as safety threats to people like my wife, Courtney, who can tear it up with the best of them on the dance floor, but sometimes struggle with the simpler things like stairs and the ground in general. This also does not solve our railing issues on the second floor.

Use the comments. Let us know what you think.

Greg La Vardera of LamiDesign and Materialicious fame has been so gracious as to organize an open house at the modern rehab we posted on a few weeks ago. Since that post, the “Vader House” on Fletcher St has been picked up by almost a dozen other modern design blogs and seems to have struck a cord with blog readers from all over the place.

The open house will be this Wednesday, June 18th, at 6:00 PM. The address is 2062 E Fletcher St, Philadelphia, PA 19125. Come on out and take a look. Don’t dress too fancy. This is East Kenzington. Greg is also keeping track of the turnout potential so please drop him an email at glv [at] lamidesign.com if you plan to come. Some of us from the 100K crew definitely plan to attend.

Google Map:

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I just ran across apartment therapy‘s fourth annual contest to find the smallest, coolest apartment called Small Cool 2008. The requirements for being considered in the small category are that your home or apartment measure 850 square feet (79 square meters) or less.

I have just started looking through the list of entries and winners but am sure to spend a few hours at this site over the next few days. We can’t qualify for this contest as we are over 1,000 sf but I am very much looking forward to designing a few smaller homes in the next few years based on the 100K concept. This contest and others like it will certainly be motivation. Below is an image from the winner.

A friend of mine pointed out this modern rehab to me right around the corner from our site earlier this week that is now listed for sale. It turns out that one of our readers, Todd Bennett, is the co-owner of the rehabbed garage and was kind enough to give me a tour yesterday.

The story behind the rehab is actually pretty interesting. Todd, his girlfriend (now wife) and another friend who were all Master of Architecture majors at University of Pensylvania were faced with the task to find internships for the summer about two years ago. Together they came up with the idea to buy, design and rehab a house in Philly for their summer experience rather than going the traditional internship route. They dove in and two years later are putting the finishing touches on their modern rehab which they are now selling due to everyone graduating and moving out of Philly for their new jobs.

The rehab ended up taking longer than planned due to common development issues in Philadelphia, but the team stayed on budget and completed the majority of the construction themselves. Todd said that the timeline for the project was as follows:

• First Summer shopping for a property and purchasing
• Entire following school year for obtaining zoning and building permits
• Next summer and school year for complete rehab

The finished product is impressive and boast the following features:

• Cor-Ten steel screen facade that provides privacy, security and looks badass
• Interior courtyard separating public space from private space in the home
• 600 sf extensive green roof
• 200 sf rooftop patio with recycled tire pavers
• Bamboo flooring throughout
• On-demand electric water heater
• 3 beds + 2 baths with 10-12 ft ceilings
• Exposed brick interior
• modern finishes throughout

Check out the links below for sales info and lots more images of the home. It has just been put on the market for $419K and while this is a bit pricey for the neighborhood it could also be considered a bargain for this unique, modern space unlike anything else you will find in Philly right now.

Todd’s Flickr Page for the Vader Home (He says it looks like Darth Vader’s Lair)

In an effort to defend the viability of the exposed CFL throughout the house I have compiled a few example images of modern interiors where the technique was successfully implemented. All of these are from Japan.

The first image is of the “T+M House” by Koizumi Studio.

The rest of the images below are from one of my favorite Japanese architecture firms – Tezuka Architects.

What kind of ceiling fans do you get for a modern house on a tight budget. How ’bout this. These are as bare bones as you can find for ceiling fans and can be found for under $75 each. There are a number of manufacturers that sell very similar models. This is a Westinghouse model that comes in brushed nickel for the same price as the white versions.

Here’s one from Emerson that’s a bit fancier and just over $100.