A house that is mostly roof
A single-storey house in the Welsh hills where the roof does the work of walls, and the walls barely exist...
The brief was two words: keep dry. The site is a shelf on a hillside that takes the rain from the west for most of the year, and the house answers it with a roof that starts at the ridge and does not stop until it is a metre off the ground.
What the roof does
- It is the weather wall. The west side has no wall to speak of, only roof.
- It is the porch. The eaves are deep enough to leave boots under.
- It is the room. Inside, the ceiling follows the pitch and the house is one tall space with a sleeping loft at the high end.
What the walls do
Not much, and that is the point. Glazed to the valley on the east, blank to the lane on the north, and a single door in the south gable. The structure is in the roof; the walls are infill.
A house is a roof with somewhere to stand under it. Everything else is negotiable.
Materials
Slate on the roof, which is what the hill is made of. Larch inside, left to grey. A concrete floor that holds the day's heat into the evening. Nothing that needs painting.
One building a month, by email
A photograph, the plan, and the reason. Nothing else.
Hana Sato
Architect and one of the four partners. Writes most of what appears here and draws the plans with no furniture on them.
Folio
An architecture and interiors journal: houses, rooms, materials, and the reasons behind them.
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