sou fujimoto: OM house photographed by iwan baan

house ‘OM’ photo © iwan baan

here is a preview of iwan baan’s photographs of sou fujimoto‘s house ‘OM’ in yokohama, japan.

the three storey open house idea came from from the client. they wanted a house with a courtyard with a rich atmosphere. as the site was comparatively small, just 72 square meters, fujimoto imagined the interior dwelling space as interwoven in

complex ways with the exterior spaces. the result was a three-dimensional courtyard that links in various ways to the dwelling spaces, a kind of ambiguous interface between the inside and the outside. the house was transformed into an abstract, cloud-like organism. each floor is given a distinctive shape by slicing out a differently shaped exterior space. we stacked the resulting floor shapes on top of another, whereas the exterior spaces and interior spaces were interlinked. it was than that we discovered further levels of three-dimensional complexity.

during the design of the internal spaces, we inserted and organized the parts needed for daily life such as kitchen and bathroom. by arranging elements such as stairs and storage into boxes, the internal space was transformed into a house for living. although the house is complicated and confusing in its outside-inside links, i believe it works well as a place to live in.

with fujimoto’s latest project house OM, the internal spaces are stacked in such a way that it looks like they are all tangled around one central courtyard.

photo © iwan baan

photo © iwan baan

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