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The Perfectly-Lit “Dancing Living House”

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From the street, the only window you can see on this building by Junichi Sampei of a.l.x. is what seems to be just an intriguing box of glass in one corner.

The whole building is precariously balanced on a smaller footprint, creating a garage space under its hovering mass.

The “dancing living house” is a three story live/work dance studio in Yokohama.

An angled edge at the back creates a terrace outside the bedroom at the top of the building.

The building is day-lit by two skylights that run along the top of the roof.

At the front, another skylight, (that ends in the cube of glass seen from the street) sends daylight down two floors to the dance studio below through a second strip of glass in the floor.

The clients, a married couple, wanted a dance studio by day that could become their living room at night.

Their bedroom and bathroom is upstairs.

The deck outside the bedroom widow opens to the deck on the top floor.

To go downstairs to the studio, the couple must walk across the glass, and be briefly seen from the streey in the glass cube, as if on a stage.

On the dance floor, the kitchen is along one wall that can be curtained off when the dance studio is in session.

At night, the dance studio becomes their living room.

Curtains can conceal the studio mirror wall, as well as the kitchen wall.

The bathroom/bedroom above has a view down into the living room/dance studio, and the stairs that connect the floors.

Light comes down into the studio from both ends of the building from the skylights that run along the edges of the roof.

So at both ends of the building, diffuse light is brought down to the studio by a strip of glass on the roof on each side.

What seems on the outside to be a building with not enough windows, turns out to be perfectly lit studio, with no glare.