Perimeter skylights throw light across a grid of exposed wooden ceiling beams inside our second house this week from Japanese studio mA-style Architects (+ slideshow).Positioned in a shady location between two neighbouring buildings in Aichi, Japan, the wooden house couldn’t have many windows, so mA-style Architects added skylights around each side of the flat roof. Daylight disperses itself through the interior by bouncing off both the ceiling beams and the laminated wooden walls. “The design intended to create a space with uniformly distributed light by adjusting the way of letting daylight in and the way of directing the light,” said the architects.Bedrooms and storage spaces are contained within two-storey boxes scattered through the interior. Rectangular openings lead into the spaces, plus those at first-floor are accessed using wooden ladders.”Considering each box as a house, the empty spaces in between can be seen as paths of plazas and remind us of a small town enclosed in light,” the architects added.A bathroom, a study space, bookshelves and a kitchen with steel surfaces line the perimeter of the open-plan space.White-painted wooden panels clad the exterior of the rectilinear structure, including a sliding door that gives the house a corner entrance.Led by partners Atsushi and Mayumi Kawamoto, mA-style Architects has also completed a house with small attic spaces tucked into the triangular roof and an elevated house that points out like a giant rectangular telescope.
