Architect Tan Yamanouchi & AWGL designed A Cat Tree House as a home in Kamakura, Japan, for his household and cats.
Located an hour exterior of central Tokyo, the home was designed by Architecture studio Tan Yamanouchi & AWGL’s founder to be a snug house for his cats with an inside association that takes cues from climbable, cat bushes.
“The primary purpose behind this venture was to design a home relating to our two cats as two purchasers,” studio founder Tan Yamanouchi instructed Dezeen.
“This building is for my home and studio the place my spouse and I dwell with our two cats. We thought that our cats would possibly truly know extra about the way to take pleasure in a home than we do,” he continued. “That’s why I got here up with the idea of asking my two cats, as an architect, how they take pleasure in their home.”
Drawing on the type of a cat tree, the home includes a collection of areas that department from a central winding staircase.
The staircase is lit by a skylight and was designed across the dimensions of Yamanouchi’s cats.
“The rises are designed primarily based on the physique measurements of our cats, which led to having 23 completely different flooring ranges,” Yamanouchi defined.
“The total home is thus divided into positive stripes, between which our feline purchasers spend all day travelling.”
A jagged stainless-steel handrail designed to imitate a mountainous panorama runs alongside the sting of the staircase, framing views into the ground-floor house beneath.
“The design of the handrails carried out within the atrium for fall prevention was impressed by the mountain views of Kamakura,” stated Yamanouchi.
The entrance door opens onto a small dipped entrance house, with the remainder of the home’s floor flooring break up throughout numerous ranges set at completely different heights.
An informal seating space occupies the bottom stage of the bottom flooring. A kitchen fitted with a concrete island and a wall of wood-framed cabinets is about one step larger, whereas a comfortable eating space is raised up by another stage.
Above the kitchen, the picket construction of the staircase was expressed, which the studio hopes will add a novel accent to the house in addition to nodding to the construction of the home, which is totally created from wooden.
“The staircase construction is a cantilever impressed by tamasudare, a display product of loosely woven bamboo sticks for a standard Japanese avenue efficiency, the place performers twist, fold, and prolong it to kind numerous shapes,” stated Yamanouchi.
“From the angle of cultural sustainability, we aimed for an built-in design that mixes conventional Japanese structural strategies with progressive architectural structural engineering.”
An extra collection of steps nestled behind the principle staircase leads right down to a sunken home studio and workspace.
Between the principle ranges of the home, a collection of lengthy bookshelves comply with the trail of the winding staircase throughout two partitions, resulting in the 2 bedrooms on the highest flooring.
“For the cats, the steps operate as cosy bedding, whereas for us people, they grow to be a ebook vault with appropriate peak variations to take a seat wherever,” stated Yamanouchi.
Outside, the home was clad in darkish slate, and options an angular, blocky kind influenced by the mountains in Kamakura and shaped from two intersecting volumes topped with sloped roofs.
A split-level backyard planted with eighty plant species surrounds the home, bordered by a concrete wall.
“I designed the form of this building by inspiration from the surroundings of the mountains in Kamakura,” stated Yamanouchi.
“The website on which this building is constructed has strict authorized restrictions. Only the form of gable roofs is allowed on this land. So, I designed this architectural form that intertwines two single-sided roofs,” he continued.
“The type of this home consists of two L-shaped volumes, every with a shed roof of various angles. By interlocking the 2 volumes, we designed a basic form that simplifies development and blends in with the mountains of Kamakura but avoids being a home we now have all seen earlier than.”
Other cat-influenced structure initiatives lately featured on Dezeen embrace a lodge for pets in Portugal and a set of 5 London flats that characteristic 27,000 hidden cat faces.
The images is by Lamberto Rubino.
