<The place> for people living originated from <the road>.

It was a very hot and humid summer day three years ago. I visited this place using only a simple map to find my way knowing only the name of the place. I took public transportation and walked on the hill up and down. And I sometimes lost my way. When I got there, I thought, this is an important point that the fresh wind from the ocean and the panoramic view of Kobe harbor refreshes me when I'm feeling a pleasant fatigue.

I wanted to make a <the new road>.
That's the one <road> I can't make anywhere else.

This building is located half way up the quite residential areas that skirts the Kobe-bozu mountain. We can set up <the road> from the surface of the earth to the highest floor level observing the regulations. However, we wanted to adjust the reciprocal relations of interior and exterior of this building, and to change the development of sequence for seeing Kobe harbor at each level.
We establish the house as an annex to <the road>. This road is 73 meters long, 7.3 vertical meters from the ground to the horizontal roof terrace. By simple reckoning, this road has a gentle slope of 1/10, but varies in degree from place to place having steep, flat and gentle slopes. <The road> occupies 1/3 of all the construction area, and <the slope terrace> is 70% of <the road> part.
Making <the road> can also be said as observing *<awai>. It is a valuable concept for making <the road> if it could untie the individual boundaries, so you can get the feeling of contact and association to others. We used to make the border clear to keep our privacy. I would say this is a passive way. Now we're trying the active way. And it's important to give them a chance to think about the relation with <the road>.
When you deal with small building like house, it is more important to think about <the road> construction from the public road. We still have old-fashioned style of living, and box-shaped dwellings.
Can we get out from this or not? We have created the road to connect one place with another, but we make <the road> first, and then <the place> will be added.
<The road>, that is <awai> creates <the place> where people start acting. Even if we make <the road>, the house is still s house. What we tried to do here is set <the place>, reading the other side of words, and thinking in terms of [affordance]. We think, this is our mission to carry on this question:How much are we concerned, or how much should we be, relating <the road> to <the place>.

isamu nakamura

*awai : the space between two or more points.