Distant worries, near risks

　Assumptions are troublesome.

　If you think about it calmly, it shouldn't be like that, but once you get caught up in one image, the other possibilities disappear from your mind. When it comes to building houses, one of the preconceived notions is that the world is always sunny.

　According to data (2016) from the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the average number of days it rains or snows in a year in Japan is 122 days. In fact, one-third of the year is bad weather calculation. However, there are surprisingly few people who build their homes in preparation for rainy and snowy days. I think this tendency is particularly strong for people who live in warm regions throughout the year.

The other day, I met again for the first time in several years a male designer in his 50s who was a former carpenter and now runs a first-class architect office. As we exchanged updates, he told me that he had a dog for the first time in his life. It's a golden retriever. Now walking the dog has become part of his daily routine.

One rainy day, he put on a coat that he hadn't worn in a long time, and took his beloved dog out on the usual walking course. As he circled back to his house, he reached for his front leg to wipe the dog's leg on the porch. Then, Golden on the Sanwa soil shook his massive body, sifting out the raindrops that had soaked into his body like a dehydrator. The narrow entrance was immediately flooded with water, not to mention the floor and the walls.

"Ah, that's when I realized for the first time that a house has to be designed with the idea of ​​walking the dog on a rainy day."

　Even professionals who have been drawing housing blueprints for many years are surprisingly indifferent to designs that assume rainy weather.

　Sometimes when I'm sitting around a drinking party with architects I know well, the topic of "I'm not good at this kind of client" gets heated up. Although the members have changed, one of the "donors who are not good at it" who always gets a lot of support is a person who only worries about distant places.

　A young couple in their 30s are worried about the nursing care life that one of them may come to in 50 years during the entire meeting. “Where would you like to install a home elevator?” “Can a wheelchair turn the corner of this hallway?” “Please remove all steps throughout the house.”

Certainly, it is important to prepare for the future, but the designer's true feelings are, "You don't have to think about it now, do you?" It is not necessarily the case that people will continue to live in the same house 50 years from now.

　Only those clients are not so concerned about the risk of "rain" that may come tomorrow. Where do you put your wet umbrella, where do you wash your muddy boots, where do you dry your laundry? This seems to be a more urgent problem, but whether the blue sky that spreads out in the background of the completion drawing is burned into my eyes, everything is left to the designer and the rain blows away somewhere. put away.

Sad bicycle family

　I visit houses that have just been completed several times a year for interviews. For some reason, it rained a lot in the afternoon on those days.

　I folded the umbrella I brought from the nearest station in front of the entrance of the interviewee, and tried to find a place to put it. As expected, there doesn't seem to be a suitable place.

Unavoidably, I tried to lean against the wall beside the entrance door, especially the slightly dented part at the joint between the outer wall materials, but by the time I got home, it had collapsed and the fabric was soaked with muddy water. there is

　In rare cases, there are houses that have a large vase-shaped umbrella stand, but unfortunately the umbrella I brought was foldable. If you put a folding umbrella into a deep umbrella stand, it will be soaked in the water that collects at the bottom like a pickle.

　Thinking about laundry, the best way to dry wet clothes is to hang them. It reminds me of the entrance of a certain design office.

　The office was located in an elegant reinforced concrete detached house, and when I visited on a rainy day, there was a metal umbrella stand at the entrance. Rather than an umbrella stand, it was a self-supporting aluminum bar (a reduced version of a pipe hanger) on which the handle of an umbrella was hooked, and several S-shaped hooks were also attached to the bar. A normal umbrella is hooked on a bar, and a foldable umbrella is hooked on an S-shaped hook with a tuft attached to the hand (handle). Both of these are safe. That's all there is to it, but so far, the office is the only entryway that even considers folding umbrellas for rainy days.

　It may seem that there is no direct relationship between the appearance of an umbrella stand and the design of a house.

　However, if you look at the umbrella stand after completion, I feel that you can get a rough idea of ​​what the designer and owner of the house thought of building the house. All things considered, support for wet umbrellas is also an important part of housing design.

　That attitude also appears in the handling of the bicycle.

　A bicycle is a vehicle that rusts when it gets wet in the rain. So you want your home to have enough space for your bike and a roof to protect your bike from the rain. However, in urban areas where small houses are densely packed, it is difficult to set up a covered bicycle parking lot, and it is difficult to get what you want. Ideally, you want to secure a suitable spot between the front road and the building. However, the place has already been secured as a parking space for one car. If you devise the layout of the building, you may not be able to create a bicycle parking space, but to be honest, it is a very troublesome task. If possible, I want to move forward without thinking about the bicycle any more.

　An architect who has an atelier-type design office in Koenji revealed the following about his heart.

"I'll check it just in case it becomes a complaint later, but when the owner says, 'It's okay to leave the bicycle out in the open.'

　Securing a bicycle parking lot with a roof is a difficult task.

　The client is the client, and during the meeting, he doesn't even think about rainy days. I tend to think that I should just park my bicycle in an empty space.

　I wonder what the result will be. The family's four bicycles, which had moved to a brand-new house, experienced several rainy days, and then huddled together under the eaves, which were less than 50 centimeters wide, under a small balcony, or on the front porch. How can it be stopped? This is because there is a "roof" that protects the rain even if it is small. It seems that it is difficult to realize the necessity of rain protection unless you actually experience the painful experience of getting wet in the rain.

We wanted something like this too

　The introduction has become longer, but this time the theme is semi-outdoors.

The term "semi-outdoor" is not necessarily popular with the population. On the other hand, I can't find any other good words, so I'll call it that for convenience. The term “semi-outdoor” here refers to a space with a “roof but no walls,” such as under the eaves, a shed, or a wet veranda.

　The point is that "there is a roof".

　It's obvious, but even if it's outdoors, if it's in a place with a roof, it won't get wet in the rain. In addition, it's not indoors, so you don't have to worry about a little dirt. This is the biggest advantage of semi-outdoors. If your dog gets drenched on a walk on a rainy day, you can wipe it off here. It would be great if there was also a small foot washing area. If you have a semi-outdoor space, you can clean up muddy soccer balls and camping equipment without hesitation. Of course, if you park your bicycle in a place like this, you don't have to worry about rainy days.

　In the past, there were houses with deep eaves or with a shed attached to the main house all over Japan. By doing so, the outer walls and window frames made of wood were protected from rainwater and lasted a long time without rotting. However, as the outer walls and window frames were replaced by highly durable industrial products, the justification of protecting the entire building from rainwater quickly faded away. Before we knew it, houses with deep eaves and sheds had quietly disappeared from our surroundings.

　In terms of protecting the building from rainwater, houses with deep eaves are still physically advantageous. However, when it came to the time when the site, which was originally about 70 to 80 tsubo, was divided in half and put up for sale, it became difficult to design the eaves due to the limitation of the area. Currently, houses with semi-outdoor spaces such as deep eaves and sheds have designs that do not naturally arise unless they are designed with clear intentions from the beginning of planning.

　For that reason, the semi-outdoor space of the house attracts attention.

For example, Kazuyuki Igawa, an architect who is active mainly in the southern part of Ibaraki Prefecture, actively builds houses with semi-outdoor spaces, taking advantage of the unique characteristics of the region that "the standard site size is 70 to 100 tsubo". Designed. If you take a look at the website of Mr. Igawa's office, you'll find many beautiful photographs of past design examples.

“Are many of Igawa’s clients asking for designs because they are attracted to the fun of the semi-outdoor space?”

When I asked the question based on the impression I got from the case photo, Mr. Igawa looked a little apologetic and shook his head.

"No, most clients are not interested in that kind of thing at all. If there is a request for a semi-outdoor space, I would like you to create a parking lot where you can get in and out without getting wet in the rain. about

　At least at the first meeting, it is said that almost no client shows interest in the semi-outdoor space. However, the wind direction soon changes. When Mr. Ikawa explained what he meant by showing examples, the owner immediately leaned forward.

　For example, there is a case of a house where a large shed is also used as a roof for a parking lot. The house is connected to the laundry room with a washing machine at the back of the parking lot. Therefore, the washed laundry can be easily carried to the shed and dried in the empty space at the back of the car. There is no need to worry about getting wet in the rain because the semi-outdoor space becomes a clothes drying area. Of course, you don't have to worry about the humidity or smell that comes out of the laundry like you would when drying it indoors. The so-called “parking lot and clothes drying space” is a popular dual-use space nationwide, and when the owner explains how it works, the client's voltage rises at once.

"This is what I wanted at home!"

　Until then, their interest, which had been going back and forth between the LDK and the storage, suddenly spread to the outside of the building as soon as they were shown a picture of the parking lot and drying area.