Yotsuma tanoji is a four-room layout in the configuration of the Chinese character 田 ('ta', or 'rice paddy') that is used in Japanese minka folkhouses. This traditional concept was applied to the spatial organisation of the White Hut, a modest 90-square-metre house in the verdant rural residential neighbourhood of Shisui in Chiba Prefecture east of Tokyo, where this building type is still found. The house, designed by architects Sanae Kometani and Yasuhiro Matsuda of practice ADO, is perched along a gently sloping street extending from the railway, dotted with a smattering of shops, clinics and churches. 'To facilitate opportunities for social interaction,' Matsuda explains, 'we sliced the north and south corners of the tanoji arrangement, making spaces that mediate between the interior and the exterior environments.' The plan lends flexible and open interconnectivity between public and private spaces and confers ease in separating those domains without the need for excess materials or partitioning. For the client, who is a professional librarian, the architects envisioned a home that could also serve as a library for her personal collection of children's books made accessible to the neighbouring community.
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