Ant House

Japanese studio mA-style architects have created the Ant-house for a family in Omaezaki City, Shizuoka, Japan. The house is composed of a single black volume clad in metal panels. This cube blocks the interior of the house completely from the street, as it is windowless on the front. Through a heavy door, the space changes to vivid yellow covered by larch plywood. It is intended to look and feel like a hiding place, with ambiguous spaces and few partitions. These loose spatial delineations create a layout that allows the user to freely define the house based on their wants and needs.

The house begins with a simple rectangular space clad in wooden panels. The kitchen, washroom, desk and storage shelving line this area, creating a room that also functions as a passage. Parallel to this passage is the "free space", topped with a gable roof, with sunlight and the wind coming into the space from an aperture. In the night time, one can see moonlight and hear the singing of insects.

The space also enables users to see each other, as a space with no partition does not have the usual perception as a room. In the cube which was covered by black wall, a plywood "ant-house" is created where minimal detailing allows natural materials to shine and minimal space planning lets users define the world around them.

Description by DOMUS