Up until recently, the years had not been particularly kind to this poor little dwelling in Kyoto, Japan. A number of "illogical renovations" meant that key pieces of the framework—as in pillars and walls needed to, say, keep the place standing—had been spliced away, leaving the structure highly unstable, and almost completely dark throughout most of the day. Likened to "the sleeping place of an eel" by local firm Shimpei Oda Architect's Office, the renovation efforts centered around making the 13-foot-wide and 42-feet-deep space feel more open and bright, with a designated space for the artist client to set up a studio.
Now, the boxy home and workplace is a uniform sleek white, with room-dividing columns, and almost nothing in the way of excess furniture (nor a single slumbering eel!) To increase the flow of natural light into the shady space, a garage-like front panel was removed, and replaced with a large picture window. Architizer has photos, plus a few more words from the architect, right this way.
· [Architizer]