The site for House Tj is located in an old residential area. It once used to be a quality neighbourhood with the local community watching out for each other, but as this general attitude gradually faded out, crime rates were rising and starting to become an issue. The essential theme for the residents of House Tj was to create a home where a family with a young child could feel safe and secure.
The first feature of House Tj is its welcoming atmosphere, opening up its entire ground floor to the community. The patio can be entered freely from the outside and the main room is designed in the form of an open space. By developing an interaction of seeing and being seen, the concept attempts to enhance the security of the community by providing a sort of neighborhood watch situation. Glass partitions are used to separate all the rooms that face the patio and the design manages to avoid the use of ugly columns in this area by the use of a strong and solid beam. Private rooms such as bedrooms are situated on the upper floor. A high level of privacy is achieved by paving the foot of the staircase in the same manner as the patio and thus imposing a barrier* in order to climb up the stairs.
The outgoing spirit of House Tj should be an acceptable style of neighbourhood participation for modern Japanese who are now accustomed to sitting and eating at outdoor cafes, using their mobile phones, listening to music with portable music players, and enjoying videogames while out and about.
(*People usually take their shoes off when entering a house in Japan, and need to be barefooted in the main room. To then go upstairs, they must first put their shoes on to reach the staircase and take them off again to climb up the steps. This process serves as a psychological barrier.)
