Japanese architecture

Located atop the sand dune hills of Futaba-cho in the Chuo ward of Niigata city, the area has a notable history. 170 years prior, the area was an erosion control forest meant to bind the sand and prevent it from blowing into the city. After a large fire in Niigata, the city underwent a large scale urban development project in the 1960s and 70s, where this erosion control forest gave way to the construction of educational and residential buildings.   Presently, the formerly large residential units of the area are being divided into smaller segments, leading to a densely packed residential area. The site on which “ta house” is built, is also part of this history.   The site is in a flagpole shape, (a flagpole site has a narrow entry path lead... More

Located in the heavy snowfall region of Yokote city, Akita prefecture, the site originally comprised of a large residence, a storehouse and a large Japanese garden. Our design direction was to demolish the original house and storehouse, and rebuild atop the site, a more compact house for the couple. It was very important for the clients to preserve onsite large Japanese garden, as they had nurtured it for many years, and since the site receives such heavy snowfall, they also sought a more comfortable relationship with this environment and its hardships.   With this brief, we proposed a building where all the daily living activities and spaces are arranged on the first floor and the second floor is a low ceiling loft. Thus, in essence creati... More

The site is located in an old and quiet neighborhood of Sakata city, Yamagata prefecture, near the national highway that runs through the Tohoku region. On house is designed for a family of four whose design brief detailed the need for a house that can cater to the individuality of each member of the family. The clients wanted a house where each member of the family can have their own space but they can feel the presence of others around them.   With this brief in mind, we scattered 3 towers on the large 330 square meter site and connected them using a deep eave band at the mid-level of the towers. When the residents travel in between the towers, they will invariably cross spaces, like the doma (cement floor) corridor or the terrace, under... More

The site is located in the dense residential area of Narayama, Akita city, facing a row of a thousand cherry trees lining the bank of the Taihei River. The house is designed for a couple and their child on a small land of 92.5 msq, located at the fork of a road.   What was required from the design: A house with the ability to open out to its the surroundings, despite the harsh Akita snow, and enjoy the view of the cherry blossom trees lining the Taihei River from the comfort of the house. Since the site is located in a dense residential district, the narrow road fronting the site sees heavy traffic. We felt that a conventional construction approach would seem oppressive to this surrounding, and thus the two walls facing the road are incline... More

Located in the mountain basin of Uonuma, Japan; the city does a complete turnaround from warm humid summers to snow covered winters. Here the temperature can reach up to 30 degree celcius in summers with over 80% humidity, while in winter the city might receive snowfall reaching up to 3 meters in height. Thus, a house built in this region needs to not only face the adversities of the land but also create an environment where the residents can thrive within their surroundings.   The conventional design approach to counter this snow is to elevate the living spaces, use mechanical means to melt rooftop snow using ground water and have thick walls with additional insulation. But all these measures create an isolation between the inside a... More

Opposites rule: light and darkness create an ideal separation, so the same space can serve the two souls in Japs! – fast and slow. This was a 360° project that went from interior decor to branding, connecting every aspect: for example, the decorative motif in the logo became a graphic and architectural element, in a relationship of perfect symmetry between image and architecture. Now each Japs! restaurant offers a different Japanese specialty, effectively connoting the chain’s different venues and sparking clients’ curiosity.Japs! – Carlo Alberto was the first restaurant to introduce Turin to traditional izakaya, the Japanese after-work venue par excellence. In this, designing the new counter – a western in... More

Opposites rule: light and darkness create an ideal separation, so the same space can serve the two souls in Japs! – fast and slow. This was a 360° project that went from interior decor to branding, connecting every aspect: for example, the decorative motif in the logo became a graphic and architectural element, in a relationship of perfect symmetry between image and architecture. Now each Japs! restaurant offers a different Japanese specialty, effectively connoting the chain’s different venues and sparking clients’ curiosity.Japs! – De Gasperi makes the separation between opposites extremely sharp with all light elements aligned on the same side. Furthermore, making the counter light stone, framed in iron, m... More

Opposites rule: light and darkness create an ideal separation, so the same space can serve the two souls in Japs! – fast and slow. This was a 360° project that went from interior decor to branding, connecting every aspect: for example, the decorative motif in the logo became a graphic and architectural element, in a relationship of perfect symmetry between image and architecture. Now each Japs! restaurant offers a different Japanese specialty, effectively connoting the chain’s different venues and sparking clients’ curiosity.Stone and wood make Japs! restaurants cozy and elegant, so clients feel welcome and stay longer. In the area closer to the entrance, darker colors and wider use of hard materials were designed for... More

A private house in Gifu prefecture which consists of traditional Japanese rooms and modern style LDK (Living, Dining and Kitchen). Japanese rooms are to be used in multiple way, sleeping, chilling, funeral etc. Doors of Japanese rooms are shoji of "taiko-bari" (wrapped by Japanese paper like a drum) so that frames of shoji are blurred in daytime and clarified at night. More

The concept of this project is to build a nursery according to the terrain. In other words, instead of digging on the slope and violently placing a rectangular parallelepiped building, we decided the shape of the building along the slope. This building is a nursery for about 140 children aged 0 to 6 years.We arranged seven children's rooms in the shape of a trace of the site, and placed stairs at the place where there was a small mountain road originally. The inner wall on the slope side of the building functions as a retaining wall, and the walls separating the rooms are embedded in the direction orthogonal to the retaining wall as a rib-structure. It plays the role of both pillars and beams.The client's request was to create a space like... More

A complete project of designer houses with modern and minimalistic design.Inspired by Japanese minimalism, these houses featuring cubic forms, reflect our team's quest for perfectionism. Located in the area of Malinova Dolina, the dwellings are designed to be part of nature and the surrounding environment. This is why the natural materials used in their construction - natural stone and silicate plaster - contribute to this. The enormous mirror glasses of the dwellings reflect the surrounding green environment, designing it on their facade, thus making the buildings part of it. More

The renovation project of the old storage of the wholesale liquor shop was built in 1911 in Ohara Isumi Chiba Japan. The shop was abandoned for some years and the storage also since the woman who was the mother of the owner was passed away.The storage was not good condition as some beams collapsing, pillars were eaten by termites or leaning. It was impossible to start using directly. And, The local government which the storage belong to has the problem of increasing abandoned houses. The local government has already been Semi-GENKAI SHURAKU (It means the population of some village is more than half of the people living in the village are over the age of 55.). Japanese local areas are exhausted as the storage before renovated.&... More

In the surrounding is the countryside landscape, in a 53 yr old Japanese house of 80 tsubos, the young couple and their children purchased it for residence and decided to renovate. Caption Making the new concept of living a new life in a 53 yr old Japanese house 53 years ago and continuing to the next generation, we can hope to harmonize between the good ancient things with new things and thought of a house that can interconnect the middle area. Caption Caption Caption First of all, we removed the part which was expanded and renovated in the 53 years of construction, returned to the original ricefield character style, and tried to insert new elements there. Caption The Original Japanese style room was made into a... More

The site locates on mountainside of Izu-san, where Pacific Ocean can be looked down on the south. The untouched wilderness, covered with deciduous broad-leaved trees such as cherry trees and Japanese oaks, gives little level ground. But we saw faint glimmer of architectural possibility along the ridge. The architecture would be used as villa for weekends. I didn’t want to just form the undulating landscape dotted with great trees as normal, nor design an elaborate architecture bowing down to the complex topography. What sprang to my mind is a blueprint for an architecture which is perfectly autonomous itself, at the same time seems to emerge as an underlying shape that the natural environment has been hiding. It’s abstraction of nature,... More