Located in a residential area near Osaka, Japan is Rooftecture M a residential house designed by Shuhei Endo.

For the roof they used a continuous sheet of bent steel, that not only acts as a cover but is also incorporated into the living space, where it act as a wall.

From Shuhei Endo:

‘Rooftecture M is a house comprising an atelier of a client.

It exists in local city for about 3 hours by a train from Osaka and is located in a flat, general residential area. The site has the small frontage is small, and its shape of a long rectangle into the north and south. Except the north side to contact with calm frontal road the site is blocked up by the neighboring houses.

Setting of an atelier of client was demanded in a plan firstly. In this atelier, a lot of visitors are expected. House spaces were demanded to be calm down and not to be noticeable space from eyes of the circumference as much as possible.

For these situations, Rooftecture M suggests space by the act that bent one piece of seat. The act make the form that a roof and a wall are continued by the one piece of seat and surround one space in site linking with necessary volume.

A demanded function goes in and out of the space surrounded by it repeating various changes.
An atelier set in the second floor level that face frontal road, and sanitary unit and the private rooms slide into the space as volume of rectangular solid which is long to the north and south. Living and dining room set as the space that connect the interval of these volumes and are kept the place that family gathered in naturally. In addition, for a resident, the space is made them to be able to take in necessary light and wind freely by cutting the seat.

This trial begins by making the state that a roof and a wall are continued by one piece of member. It is to reduce the potential function in architectural space to continuous strip, and it is to arrest it as flowing space. And Rooftecture M offer the space where a family can live on the whole, sharing continues strip partially. It catches community of family as continuous strips of partial sharing, and to suggest living environment that produce various relation.’

For more pictures visit the architect’s website.