House in Jinseki 2nd

Yoshiro Masuda

• Architects

Jinseki in Hiroshima, located 1.5 hours north of Fukuyama city, is located in a plateau region at an elevation of approximately 400 to 700 meters. It boasts a beautifully expansive landscape.

A main building, annex, and barn— They are arranged side by side in an east-west line, and we renovated the main building and barn as the fi rst phase of construction from 2021.

At this time, for second phase of construction was renovating the annex, which is to be used as the guest room. The construction of the main garden and well, where one could get a full view of the mountains across the way, was gradually started. The snow started melting, and spring feelings arrived.

photo_credit Yoshiro Masuda — Yoshiro Masuda

The detached wooden annex did not require reinforcement work due to its relatively recent construction compared to the main house and barn; however, its “newness” stood out as the only element disrupting the overall balance. To restore visual harmony, the aluminum window frames were replaced with wooden ones, aligning the annex with the charm and aesthetic of the adjacent main building.

Also, the design brings back the traditional “IGURA-TSUKURI” house style from the Kamo region in Hiroshima—a laid-back bungalow featuring a decorative upper story, expressed through its two-layered roof: “an upper roof” and “a lower roof”, similar to the exterior style of the surrounding buildings.

On the first floor, we designed three guest rooms and cleaning rooms, and in the largest guest room, we ensured a generous ceiling height of fi ve meters by utilizing the original atrium structure.

Furthermore, the project took a new direction for the fi rst phase of construction into a process of refi ning each room using client-collaborated, dialogue-driven colored Washi, with colors interpreted by Wataru Hatano, a Kurotani Washi papermaker. Each piece of Washi takes on a unique expression in every room, refl ecting the atmosphere and intent of the space.