Photo by ©Naoki Masumoto

Two neighbouring families live around a courtyard.
The site is located at the back of a private road in Kita-Kamakura. Although it is a corner lot, there is no through access, so it is surrounded by virtually every private road.
In Kita-Kamakura, it's common to walk down the street and end up lost on someone's property.
Furthermore, because of the steep difference in elevation between the railroad tracks, once you get lost, you often find yourself with a wide view. The ambiguous continuity between the public and private and this vertical surprise were the basic principles of the house's composition.
This is a two-family home for a couple with two children and their grandmother. The space surrounding the courtyard is covered with eaves, creating a continuous, human-scale space under the eaves. The interior incorporates gaps and height differences that connect to the outside of the site, and on the first floor, the courtyard is connected to the outside as if creating folds in the space, aiming for a building that gives back to the richness of the living environment by gently connecting the public and private, and the inside and outside. On the second floor, there is a viewpoint overlooking the distant mountain range of the shrine, a viewpoint overlooking the axis of the long private road, and a room surrounded by windows that cut out the sky. While the spaces are continuous, the sequence is changed so that the line of sight can be seen for a longer distance. This spatiality is directly reflected in creating a comfortable distance between the two families as they live around the garden.