MAD architects have completed their first project in Japan, the Clover House kindergarten. Located in the small town of Okazaki, the school’s setting boasts views of the paddy fields and mountains, characteristic of the Aichi Prefecture. The kindergarten was originally operated out of the old family home of siblings Kentaro and Tamaki Nara, which soon became too small and unfit for expanding their educational goals. The siblings desired to create a modern educational institution where children could feel as comfortable as they do in their own homes, allowing them to grow and learn in a nurturing setting.
It is the plan for a double family home in a tranquil residential area. My interest is in how the connection between the individual residence and surrounding public area is reflected to the house plan. In this house’s case there was a park adjacent to the north border of the site, so I wanted to put emphasis on the relationship between the house and the park as an everyday playground for children as well as a borrowing landscape for the house. So I put the opening with sliding doors on the north face of the building to secure the continuity of the traffic line and the view, while setting up a wider entrance and level difference so that the residents can enjoy hanami (Cherry blossom viewing) in spring from the interior of the house. In addition, the exterior environment is gradually connected to the interior through buffering spaces of the earthen-floor entrance on the north and the private garden on the south. Two households are separated by the volume housing staircase room and storage between east and west, marked off flexibly by sliding doors set on the south side between two households. These doors are often opened during the daytime, making the entire floor a mobile playground where children can freely run around across the households.
A house built on a narrow strip of land of 3m wide and 21m long. For this ground that looks too long and tight, we adopted a way to construct a house by reinterpreting scale, natural light, and the use of each room instead of setting one concept to design it. We made 5 specific proposals.
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