In the dense urban fabric of Tokyo’s low-rise residential zones, the idea of a courtyard house often arrives burdened with contradictions. While courtyards promise tranquility, daylight, and spatial openness, they simultaneously risk exposure in neighborhoods where proximity to adjacent buildings is a constant reality. In Courtyard House without Second Floor, Takuro Yamamoto Architects responds to this tension not by enclosing the courtyard at ground level, as is typical in urban Japan, but by lifting it skyward and, in doing so, rethinking the basic assumptions of residential typology.
Courtyard House without Second Floor Technical Information
- Architects1-11: Takuro Yamamoto Architects
- Location: Tokyo, Japan
- Area: 84.81 m2 | 912.87 Sq. Ft.
- Completion Year: 2023
- Photographs: © Ken’ichi Suzuki Photo Studio
By having a courtyard on the third floor where one does not need to worry about neighbors’ houses, and by making the living room that faces the courtyard the main living space, it is possible to propose a lifestyle of living with the sky.
– Takuro Yamamoto Architects
Courtyard House without Second Floor Photographs
Rethinking the Urban Courtyard Typology
In the dense urban fabric of Tokyo’s low-rise residential zones, the idea of a courtyard house often arrives burdened with contradictions. While courtyards promise tranquility, daylight, and spatial openness, they simultaneously risk exposure in neighborhoods where proximity to adjacent buildings is a constant reality. In Courtyard House without Second Floor, Takuro Yamamoto Architects responds to this tension not by enclosing the courtyard at ground level, as is typical in urban Japan, but by lifting it skyward and, in doing so, rethinking the basic assumptions of residential typology.
Commissioned by a couple seeking privacy and serenity within a compact urban site, the house proposes a bold inversion of conventional planning. Rather than layering private and public functions vertically, the architects chose to eliminate the second floor entirely, allowing the first and third floors to operate in deliberate dialogue. The result is a residence that privileges visual and environmental connection with the sky while subtly redefining the relationship between floor height, program, and spatial character.
Design Intent and Spatial Strategy: Living with the Sky
At the core of the project lies a radical conceptual maneuver: displacing the courtyard from the ground to the third floor. This decision emerges from a critique of the traditional urban courtyard model. In this Tokyo neighborhood, where surrounding buildings are often taller and closely spaced, a ground-level courtyard would likely be overlooked, compromising its function as a private outdoor room. High surrounding walls could restore privacy but at the cost of daylight and spatial openness.
By relocating the courtyard upward, above the line of sight of nearby houses, the architects enable a new kind of domestic experience centered on openness, air, and sky. The third floor becomes the primary living domain, composed of a light-filled living room that opens directly onto the rooftop courtyard. The courtyard, in turn, becomes not just a spatial device but a living boundary between interior and exterior, structured absence and atmospheric presence.
This elevated void also informs the project’s volumetric logic. Since the clients required only a modest floor area, the architects chose to dispense with the intermediate second floor, enabling a clearer division of functions. Communal and spatially expansive activities are raised above, while intimate, enclosed functions occupy the ground level. This unusual strategy reorients how verticality is deployed not as a stacking of programs but as a spatial gradient calibrated to privacy, light, and openness.
Materiality, Light, and Spatial Atmosphere
Constructed using a rigid wooden frame structure, the house maintains a calm and tactile material palette, allowing spatial relationships and natural light to define its atmosphere. The first floor, often overlooked in vertically stratified dwellings, benefits from a double-height volume due to the absence of the second floor. This inversion creates unexpected generosity in typically constrained spaces, such as the two workrooms facing each other across a slender internal courtyard planted with a Japanese dogwood tree.
Light becomes the central agent of spatial modulation. Tall windows on the first-floor drawing in daylight, softening the compactness of the lower level and offering fluctuating lighting conditions throughout the day. Meanwhile, the upper courtyard receives unobstructed sunlight, casting dynamic shadows and amplifying the architectural strategy of turning upward for openness.
The spatial sequence thus becomes non-linear, entering into lower, quiet rooms whose expanded vertical dimensions lend them dignity before ascending to a third-floor realm that opens horizontally to the sky. Rather than a classical hierarchy of levels, the house presents a compositional field of contrasts between enclosure and exposure, compression and release, and ground and air.
Courtyard House Urban Context
Tokyo’s residential neighborhoods are defined not only by density but also by a highly codified regulatory environment. Within the constraints of a Type 1 restricted low-rise residential zone, the architects worked with a site area of 169.78 m², achieving a floor area ratio of 77.87% and a building coverage of just under 50%. These constraints typically lead to compact, stacked dwellings. Yet the Courtyard House without Second Floor resists this default model, proposing a typological deviation that extracts architectural generosity from regulatory discipline instead.
Courtyard House without Second Floor Plans
Courtyard House without Second Floor Image Gallery
About Takuro Yamamoto Architects
Takuro Yamamoto Architects is a Tokyo-based firm led by Takuro Yamamoto. It is known for its minimalist yet conceptually bold residential designs. The practice explores spatial clarity, light, and privacy, often reinterpreting traditional Japanese typologies to suit contemporary urban conditions. Its work is characterized by a strong conceptual foundation and a refined material sensibility that emphasizes calm, atmospheric living environments.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Design Team: Takuro Yamamoto, Tomoko Yanagi
- Structural Design: NCN Corporation / Yuusuke Okamoto
- Construction: REMOL DESIGN / Hiroyuki Watanabe, Syuhei Watanabe
- Furniture: Tanaka Kogei / Toshiya Tanaka, Takeshi Minamizawa
- Structure: Wooden rigid frame
- Site Area: 169.78 m²
- Total Floor Area: 132.21 m²
- 1st Floor Area: 74.09 m²
- 3rd Floor Area: 58.12 m²
- Lot Percentage: 49.95%
- Floor Space Ratio: 77.87%
