The Ark Residence – Symphony in Symmetry

By Leah Linhares

Photography: Masao Nishikawa; courtesy Apollo Architects&Associates

  

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Apollo Architects & Associates play smart with their new residential project that displays a simple yet modern biblical twist...

Sited in a quiet residential area of Tokyo, the Ark Residence is home to a couple working at a university, who desired two independent and equal private dens, and an open living environment while maintaining their privacy. Principal architect Satoshi Kurosaki has culled out the exterior as a clever version of Noah’s ark, whilst the interior can be ascribed to purposely planned symmetry, creating a distinct formality as seen in a church!

 

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The exterior, wrapped in an appealing view, accommodates an internal courtyard and a front yard, situated symmetrically to the south and north. Above the ground, the first and second floors are wrapped in a box-shaped volume that stretches out towards the street, its overhang sheltering the front yard and doubling up as a garden for the living cum dining room. The couple’s dens and the children’s rooms are positioned at the back of the first and the second floors and the kitchen and the staircase are set on either sides of the internal courtyard – an exercise in perfect symmetry.

 

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Materials are simple and effective. The frontal facade is finished with hot-dip galvanized zinc phosphate-coated louver boards, an apt camouflage that screens the interiors from prying passersby without impeding natural light and ventilation.  Inside, the rectangular internal courtyard that incises through the home, is enveloped in glass, its Griffith’s Ash tree visible to almost all areas and rising to the second floor. A glass-topped gable roof skylight fills the home with light.

 

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Built-in furniture provided along the walls accentuates the linearity of the home and is effectively juxtaposed with the high ceiling that is covered with a gable roof and exposed doubled SPF rafters creating a bold rhythm and delicate shading at the same time.  

 

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The Ark residence in this contemporary (architectural) period is a neat build of precise uniformity in its construction.