Roji House

Roji House

Tokyo, Japan

Roji  (露地) is the garden that leads to a traditional Japanese tea house. Literally it means ‘dewy ground’, and represents a transition space between the everyday world and the serenity of the tea house.

This house is on a tight site in central Tokyo, and the client requested a tea house and a painting studio. The house was considered as a landscape, with the roji as a series of stepped terraces consisting of ground-level terraces and also roof decks. The terraces are arranged in a rough spiral around the central courtyard, and they lead up to the rooftop tea house while defining the interior spaces below. The painting studio is located on the top terrace so it opens onto the roof garden.

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