Container Design crafts a courtyard home in Yamaguchi, Japan that bridges family generations through architectural empathy and spatial continuity along a once-unguarded roadside plot.
The Courtyard in Kudamatsu, completed in 2014, responds to a peculiar yet intimate brief: to craft a passage—not merely physical but emotional—between a family’s historic home and a new living space, all within the clamor of a roadside plot.
The site, once a parking lot and croft loosely enclosed by a fence, posed a precarious scenario for the client’s children to play. The family’s traditional home, tucked deeper into the property, with its tiled roof, timber doors, and lovingly groomed yard, sets the tone for a dwelling that values relational space over architectural spectacle. Container Design’s intervention acts as a mediating object: a house shaped like a gate, its large overhanging roof evoking the familiar vernacular of the ancestral home, while its layout orchestrates the movement between two generations.
What emerges is less a house and more a spatial dialogue—an open courtyard plan invites the children to traverse between buildings safely, blurring interior and exterior. The new structure aligns itself not only in orientation but in spirit with the original home. In doing so, it transforms architecture into an expression of familial choreography, where daily life is structured by movement, memory, and mutual regard.
