This is a single-story house located in a residential area on the plains with a view of the mountains in the distance.

After purchasing the subdivision, they contacted me and the planning began. The plan was for a family that is active in the outdoors and has two close sisters to live in. My first impression was that it was a rather interesting family configuration, and even though I have worked on a large number of projects since my days as a home builder, this was a first for me with this type of resident configuration, and this is exactly what led to the design of the house.

From the beginning, they had hoped for a single-story house, but because the land on which the plan was made was large and the size of the house they had requested was relatively compact, our proposal naturally led to a single-story house. The layout is a very simple "U"-shaped house, and basically every room opens onto the courtyard in the center of the U-shape, so that when looking from one room to the other, you always look through the courtyard. This courtyard would normally be part of an indoor space, but this time it is used as an "empty room" surrounded by floors and walls with an open ceiling, as a semi-outdoor space. In other words, you look inside from inside through the outdoors, but the light conditions in the outdoor space in between are constantly changing, and the wind passing through creates a situation where the plants in the courtyard are moving. This outdoor filter reflects the natural environment indoors, sometimes harshly and sometimes gently, and is somewhat dramatic. Of course, since the courtyard is the center of the U-shape, curtains are basically not needed, which is a major factor.

There are a few things to consider that are unique to single-story houses, such as balancing security and lighting from the openings, and whether it would be difficult to sleep with the windows open at night, but by creating a courtyard in this case, we were able to resolve most of these issues.

Nowadays, in this courtyard, which could be called an "sky room," skipping rope competitions are held every night and the owner spends his precious time gazing at the unobstructed sky.

As an added bonus, the sisters had requested from the beginning that they wanted a horizontal bar and a climbing frame. We built them exactly as they requested, and also designed them so that they could be used to hang futons and hang clothes indoors in the future.