Instructive modeling #2 : Utsubo Park House by Tadao Ando

Learn to model. Learn from the model.

Since the whole point of this ‘architecture journey’ is to try and learn about a bunch of reknown projects (especially the ones I tried to model), I’ll try to take the time here to put down some notes about the lessons from Utsubo Park House 3d model, original design by Tadao Ando.

For the step-by-step making of the sketchup model you can check out my previous post about Utsubo Park House.

10 practical architecture lessons from the model

Even if this one project took a lot less time than the Menil collection model because of its smaller scale, it was certainly instructive enough to leave me with some practical architecture lessons from the great Tadao Ando, that I can share with you now :

1. Maximize the potential of a narrow plot of land
2. The Tadao Ando Signature concrete slab
3. Stretching the living room in every direction
4. Mixing interior and exterior with foldable doors
5. Channel the sunlight between two large walls
6. Paint the backyard wall green with vegetation
7. Aesthetic details in every small part of the building
8. Stylize concrete walls with striped openings
9. Understanding the client’s demand
10. Make new forms of traditional japanese spaces

Of course that list is not exhaustive and completely subjective. I assume that remembering 10 useful things about a building should already be a success in itself.

Lesson n°1 : Maximize the potential of a narrow plot of land

The whole project fits into a small rectangular plot of land of just 5m wide and 27m long. The house goes on 3 levels, from the street level to the 2nd floor.

Given the extremely small room the architect had to work with, the overall quality of the project remains and gives it all the more credit. It’s been made possible by the very precise use of floor spaces and an attention to detail we’ll discuss later.

The point of this 1st lesson is this : even if you’re stuck on a tiny base area, you can still manage to rise above those constraints and deliver an exemplary piece of architecture. For that, precision is key.

Note : it also helps if the house you’re building is made for 2 short japanese old people instead of a family of basketball players.

Lesson n°2 : The Tadao Ando Signature concrete slab

This house near Utsubo Park is yet another occasion to see at display the famous Ando concrete slab with the small holes, cast in situ with with wooden planks.

In this project, the slab constitutes the entirety of the walls around the house, from floor to floor. It is the outside texture of the façade as it is the inside finish of all the intimate spaces.

The dimensions of those concrete slabs vary from one project to another. For the Utsubo House, the slab measure basically 225cm wide for 87cm high, and it repeats itself almost everywhere like this.

I found those measurements by carefully modeling the front of the building and respecting the proportions between the slabs, the main door and the height of the entrance wall.

For rendering the model correctly, I then created a custom texture in Photoshop based on those dimensions, plus using my photos from the Bourse du Commerce, that I had previously visited.

In fact, the holes that can be seen in every slab come from removing the bolts holding the wooden cast. Those are very precisely placed in order to give that consistent texture feel on the whole project. See an example below in the Punta Della Dogana project by Ando in Venice, Italy.

Lesson n°3 : Stretching the living room in every direction

The living room, at street level, is the central part of the house. Entering from a rather small corridor coming from the street, the volume stretches more and more as we enter the living room.

It’s been emphasized by 2 techniques :

• The height is doubled on the far end of the living room : vertical stretch
• The limit between interior and exterior is erased by opening all the doors
• The backyard becomes a direct part of the living room : horizontal stretch
• The height more than triples once we enter the backyard (=end of the living room) since there’s only the sky above us : another vertical stretch

By a crescendo of volume changes, the dimensions of the living room area seem to stretch without limits, especially by connecting the exterior with the interior, with the use of glass and foldable doors.

Lesson n°4 : Mixing interior and exterior with foldable doors

That connection is made possible first by the use of the same material for the floor, either inside or outside. Whereas it might seem a little cold for a living room (stone tiles everywhere), it really helps the continuity from inside to outside.

That continuity is then made possible by the use of metallic glass doors that are able to fold on themselves, like an accordion, to be piled up stuck on the walls on both sides.

The impression to live both inside the house and in the open air is so strong that all the picture you can find of the house are pictures with the doors open wide. Because that was part of the design to mix interior and exterior seamlessly with that door system.

System that repeats itself on the second floor between the bedroom and the terrasse. Here also, is seems much more enticing to have this openness widen the intimate space all the way until the park behind.

Lesson n°5 : Channel the sunlight between two large walls

The house was surprisingly oriented south in its terrasse and living room spaces. Usually I thought it wasn’t a good idea to turn your windows south because of the sun’s impact on the inside of the house but here the sunlight is differently treated.

However, here, it seems that the two huge concrete walls that contain the whole house act as shields from the sun to minimize the exposure felt in the interior spaces such as in the living room.

Plus, the neighbour buildings, the terrasse, the roof extension on the 2nd floor as well as the trees in the forest also play their part as shields for the Utsubo Park House.

The consequence is that the sunlight is now channeled in a tight corridor between the walls and the surrounding buildings, so that the sun only shines on specific part of the house, in a very precise and deliberate manner.

When you take a look at the sun path (source Suncalc.org) in front of the house you see that there is direct lighting entering through the corridor in a very brief fraction of the day between 10 and 12am. Again, this is very deliberate.

For instance, the backyard floor is almost never directly exposed to the sunlight, it uses the back wall for shadow during the entire year.

Lesson n°6 : Paint the backyard wall green with vegetation

The rear wall of the house in the far end of the garden is usually the last one you’d think of decorating.

In this case, the backyard wall separates the house from the park, near a forest-like environment. This environment is a huge part of the house visually, so in that case it’s important that the back wall, which shares the view with the forest, is dressed accordingly.

In the Ustubo Park House, Ando fully covers the concrete back wall with vertical vegetation (ivy, ferns) to give the impression that it is pure nature. By doing so, the visual continuity with the forest is very well achieved. It almost feels like there’s no end to that garden and that the forest of the park is the garden.

Note :

Fortunately, this was very simple to model using the vegetation assets from the Enscape library into the Sketchup model.

Lesson n°7 : Aesthetic details in every small part of the building

Since it’s such a small scale project, th architect needs to make the most of every inch of building.

That is why we can see a lot of attention to details in :

• The design of the different pieces of furniture : offices, library, counters
• The design of rainwater drainage pipes
• Even the design of the electrical power supply entry in the building

Those elements were hard to model because of the scale of the details and the precision of the measurements. Also with the choicie of materials that didn’t leave anything to chance. Every piece of wood comes from the same source and has to match the concrete well.

Lesson n°8 : Stylize concrete walls with striped openings

The signature concrete slab we saw earlier is omnipresent in the whole house, either from the outside or in all the walls inside.

Since it covers everything, the only way to mark some personal touches on the concrete is to add or retract something. In the living room, we can see 2 huge vertical striped openings in the concrete that create some rhythm in the wall.

The openings are 16 cm wide each and arranged by pair and a total of 3 pairs can be found :

• in the entrance corridor
• in the living room
• in the exterior back yard

In the second floor, it is with horizontal openings that Ando customizes its concrete walls, in the terrasse (23cm high by 5,2m long) and in the office area (14cm high by 115 cm long).

Those changes in the wall writings also help identify the rooms better.

Lesson n°9 : Understanding the client’s demand

The house was custom made for a married couple and their 2 dogs. Yet, it hosts 2 separate rooms.

Let’s look at the surface distribution of this rather small program :

Floor	Room or space title	Net usable area (m²)
0	Front yard	12
0	Entrance	15
0	Kitchen / Living room / Dining room	37 to 56
0	Back yard	19
0	Restroom	3
0	Technical room	2
1	Bathroom	11
1	Bedroom (guest) + office	17
1	Closet	3
2	Office area	11
2	Bedroom (main)	18
2	Terrasse	30

From this summary table, we can see that most of those surfaces are pretty low, considering the space available on the plot of land.

This could be explained by the limitations of Japanese regulations concerning the maximum floor area ratio which is around 148% when counting the terrasse and back yard.

The only ones that stand out are :

• The kitchen/living room/dining room on the ground floor that occupy most of the surface, going as far as 56m² with the exterior accounted.
• The 2nd floor terrasse that seem strangely big at 30m²

Technical spaces and intimate rooms seem to be quasi minimal in their surface, which in understandable given that the house is only for 2 elderly people, without much social activity likely happening.

Lesson n°10 : Make new forms of traditional japanese spaces

There has been a big evolution in time with the presence of some traditional japanese spaces with the progressive shrinking of the house surface from year 1900 to 2000.

Among those those traditional spaces :

• Genkan, the entrance floor step where you leave your shoes
• Engawa, the link between the inside and the outside

We can see reminiscent parts of those two in Utsubo House, only updated in a contemporary way.

• The entrance does have a step marking the limit with the inside of the house
• The folding doors in the limit of the living room are a new type of engawa that allows the interior space to stretch outside.
• Same on the terrasse of the second floor

This lesson is a reminder to try and keep some sort of connexion with the type of building you’re making (in that case the individual japanese urban house) by applying new style and material to old concepts.

Conclusion

Not the most famous of Tadao Ando’s work, his house near Utsubo Park (one must admit it’s less catchy that the ‘Church of Light’) is still ruled by many great design principles from the japanese master architect.

For a private house on a very small plot, Ando manages to evoke a lot of grandeur and feelings of openness, as well as a great attention to details. He did so by applying some of the lessons we went through in this post and that are quite common in most of his projects.

Hope you might like this and find it useful someday.

Until then, I’ll see you on the next one.