"Diagonal of the Townhouse"

Reconfiguring the two townhouses along diagonal axes.

A corner lined with townhouses a little south of Kawaramachi Shijo in Kyoto. Between the two townhouses there is a tunnel alley leading to the back, and beyond that there are rows of houses. Two townhouses in a row facing the tunnel alley were renovated and reborn as an acupuncture clinic.

The two buildings in tandem have an extremely long and narrow space with a frontage of 3.5m and a depth of 21m. In order to use this efficiently, we set diagonal axes for the two townhouses and arranged functions along them.

The road side is a treatment building for acupuncture and moxibustion, and the space at the back, where you approach through the tunnel alley, is a relaxation building for meditation. The two buildings are connected by a courtyard and Engawa.

The exterior wall is set back 1.6m from the road, creating a distance from the city while the extended floor becomes a bench, providing a small place for the city to hang out. In the treatment building, the floor runs diagonally to avoid the old pillars, beams, and mud walls of the townhouse, and the treatment rooms, waiting area, and hot water supply space are placed on both sides. This is a space where the line of sight flows from the road to the courtyard along the diagonal axis. In contrast, in the relaxation building, the meditation room and water area are arranged as two white volumes. It is a space where you can walk through the gaps between the volumes.

It is an architecture in which the boundary between inside and outside is shaken, with the courtyard coming into the room and the floor extending outward and jumping out. It was the wisdom of old Japanese people to seek comfort by blurring the inside and outside with things like shoji screens and verandas, but the modern arrangement of the middle area gives people solace.