The H House is located in a typical residential area of Tokyo. SOU Fujimoto’s customers, however, are described as less typical, possessing “a sophisticated understanding of quality in space”. They assigned the architect an adversarial memory asking for a variety of clearly defined pieces that combine to produce a singular continuous space. Parents of a young girl, they wanted a space for “shared independence” with “well-connected and well-separated rooms”. The result is this compact group of interiors that adopts a stripped Loosian quality, with plans divided into four quadrants. However, they support very little the complexity of the houses Raumplan of the Viennese architect (AR January 2009). Instead, Fujimoto’s interiors present a complex section, thanks to the relationships between the slabs and the composition of the openings in the walls and floors.
Fujimoto applies to this rectilinear concrete construction a curious metaphor, comparing it to a tree. The Association is abstract, he explains: “it does not have the shape of a tree, but resembles a tree in relation to the relationship between the branches.
