This is the compact renovation project of the middle part of the connected row houses, named Japanese “Nagaya” in Kyoto. It is a traditional type of multiple dwelling house that was proposed for civilian people to be able to settle on limited land in the Edo period, and some dwelling units were distributed by setting shared walls between neighbors with stripe shapes in a whole building. According to the government research report, approximately 17,700 housing units remain in Kyoto, failing to meet modern social needs such as high-performance thermal insulation, soundproofing, and privacy from neighboring units. Due to the difficulty in separating units from the larger structural frame, each unit lacks sufficient structural strength. As a result, the approach often taken in Japan, where entire buildings are demolished to create new flat sites, is frequently viewed without a historical mind. This project aims to be a hopeful renovating model of Japanese Nagaya that has taken this place’s history and context due to accomplishing the three main points below.

・Design a unique experience from the city to a compact open living and dining space in this unit by taking advantage of Kyoto’s progressive-scale changing streets: from a main load—street—pathway—entrance and the living and dining space in it.
・Focusing on the context and historicity of this area, elements such as the dividing walls of the housing units and the sense of materials were incorporated into the interior with our respectful mind. Namely, it has created comfort and coziness by transforming the homogeneous and inorganic streetscape into a rhythmic and material interior.
・The project will improve the quality and design of the internal environment by strengthening and renewing the insulation and soundproofing to the official criteria levels of zero energy houses in Japan and renovating the modern interior.

On the first floor, where the living space, dining space, kitchen, wash corner, and bathroom converge, the space is parted into three sections with characteristic walls according to the positions of existing structural columns. These walls are finished with warm and textured wooden panels, and the straight joint part indicates the regularity of Nagaya’s housing equal partitions. Adding three repeatedly lined R-shaped openings, while regular like a cityscape, gives rhythm to the interior. The wooden panels were painted with white oil and then loosely sanded around the knots in the wood to emphasize the grain. By fitting hooks and switches and arranging gates to each room on these walls, goods of daily life and residents’ activities will appear around them. The living and dining space with the high ceilings is placed among these three walls that appear to mix with external and internal circumstances. Consequently, residents will be able to get a calm place and time in the densely residential area as if they spend slow time in a pocket park surrounded by buildings in a city.