Abstract
Hiroshi Hara is one of the most famous architect in the history of contemporary Japanese architecture. During the 1970's beginning with the Awazu Residence (1972), he designed a series of symmetrical houses, the so called 'Reflection House'. All the houses in this period were based on the method of 'reflection' and 'inversion', which means a radical reversal of the accepted notion that houses are parts of cities. A concept of "A house within a house" is expanded to "A city within a house". The important spatial characteristics of 'Reflection House' are main internal core and valley-like spaces forming internal urban streets by bringing natural elements and the components of streetscape such as plaza, open space, context of street facades and so on. This procedure is called as embedding 'city' into 'house', Hara mentioned. This paper investigates the outline of the 'Reflection House' and analyses the completed works of housing that were based on the theory. Then in the final part of the paper, the implications of 'Reflection House' and its influence on his later works of following period will be discussed.