Yo Shimada Lab, Environmental Design, KCUA

A Large Semicircle That Holds Everyday Life

Renovation of a municipal housing unit, Kyoto

Design

Yo Shimada Laboratory, Kyoto City University of Arts

Supervising faculty

Yo Shimada, Wataru Doi, Kosaku Matsumoto

Students

Kei Ueki, Musashi Kinoshita, Koito Tsubouchi, Chisa Mimura (first-year master’s students at completion)

Construction

Amuza Koumuten

Photography

Yohei Sasakura

Can a single piece of furniture change the way a home is inhabited? In a vacant unit of a municipal housing complex in Kyoto, a semicircular table 3.6 meters in diameter now stretches across the living room — too large to move, too generous to ignore. Around it, the everyday unfolds: meals, work, conversation, rest.
The renovation was designed by graduate students of the Shimada laboratory at Kyoto City University of Arts, as part of a citywide experiment in which eight universities each transform one unit of an aging housing estate into homes for welfare workers. Within a white one-room space, domestic functions are gathered into plywood volumes, while the table’s blue-green edge quietly ties the room together — a large semicircle that holds everyday life.

This project is part of a housing-estate renovation initiative in which eight universities across Kyoto each took charge of a single unit, renovating vacant units in a Kyoto municipal housing estate into company housing for welfare-sector workers. The aim is twofold: to revitalize the estate community by putting empty units back into use, and to provide housing support for welfare workers.

The following is the design concept, in the students’ own words.

The unit was originally laid out for a nuclear family. The existing plan — fragmented by walls — was dim and confining, and never felt spacious. Yet once everything but the structural frame was stripped away, a space opened up that felt almost too large for a single occupant.

Our laboratory comprises four first-year master’s students and four third-year undergraduates. Each of us presented a renovation scheme, and at a joint interim review held across the eight universities we put forward eight proposals. Through the ensuing discussions toward realization, one scheme was selected for construction, and we began studying services and finishes and preparing the working drawings.

In response to a room that reads as large, we placed a semicircular table — one that transcends human scale — in the living space. The living room, over 20 square meters, has no dividing walls; within a space finished uniformly in white paint, a circular table 3,600 mm in diameter grows out of the structure as if half of it had emerged from the adjacent room. Against the expanse of the room, we hope this large, function-less surface becomes a generous table that serves as the backdrop to daily life.

In contrast to this symbolic and abstract space, the functional service rooms are gathered into roughly one-third of the total area. Matching the color of the large table in the living room while retaining the texture of tile and plywood, these rooms are given a character distinct from the living space. Each was arranged using the walls of the toilet and bathroom — fixed and immovable — as anchor points.

With the bedroom, kitchen, toilet, and bathroom pared down to minimal areas, everyday life will inevitably spill out onto the large table.