House in Saidera
I have been exploring what a house might be if it could resonate with people across different nations, cultures, and eras. It is neither a lavish, luxurious residence nor a minimalist white cube. Rather, I believe it is a house that quietly absorbs the atmosphere of its place while retaining a timeless and universal sense of beauty.
The site is a flagpole-shaped lot located amid a mixture of traditional Japanese houses and contemporary developer-built homes, a place that reflects an ongoing transition of time. With a limited budget, and in designing a house for a family of five suited to this place, the image I had in mind was that of a traditional Japanese house. Timber framing is exposed through shinkabe construction (shinkabe: a traditional Japanese method in which columns and beams are expressed on the interior), a stripped-down appearance free of excess. Spatial relationships allow inside and outside, and room and room, to remain loosely connected rather than rigidly separated. Even with a small floor area, such transparency makes the house feel open rather than confined. At a time when construction costs continue to rise, I believed that reconsidering the wisdom embedded in traditional Japanese houses was the most rational approach.
To harmonize with its surroundings, the building takes on a simple two-story gabled form. Its modest exterior is finished in charred cedar. While keeping floor heights low, the structure is exposed, and a single layer of cedar boards serves simultaneously as the second-floor flooring and the first-floor ceiling. In this way, a sense of openness is achieved while reducing both materials and construction processes. The construction materials were limited to readily available, standard products, and specifications that increase trade divisions were avoided in favor of materials that could be executed entirely by carpenters.
For the couple, who enjoy cooking, the kitchen and dining room are placed at the center of the house, with other domestic functions compactly arranged around them. Toward the east, where the land drops, a large opening and an engawa veranda (engawa: a narrow wooden platform or corridor connecting interior and garden) are introduced, allowing one’s awareness to naturally extend outward. The house was conceived as a place where a family of five can live comfortably, without a sense of constraint.
The various requirements placed on the house—such as client requests, performance, and cost—were carefully adjusted through a contemporary interpretation of the sensibilities of Japanese dwelling. In the Japanese-style room, a floating storage closet and a small tokonoma (tokonoma: a small space at the back of the Japanese-style room where seasonal flowers and art are displayed) intertwine with the sofa, blurring the boundary with the living and dining spaces. A foldable wooden panel used to close off a floor-level window can be stored by engaging its handle into a notch cut into the TV cabinet’s top, allowing it to act as if it were part of a single built-in piece of furniture. This device was inspired by traditional Japanese architecture, in which certain functions appear only when needed and otherwise blend into space or furniture, embracing mobility and dual-use.
Further, the vertical frame adjacent to the column in the Japanese-style room shoji (shoji: translucent sliding screens made of thin wooden lattices covered with washi) is omitted by attaching a hardwood screen to the edge of the interior-side sliding door. On the second floor, the columns and beams act as frames for the sliding doors, thereby eliminating part of the door frames. These operations enhance the independence of the structural skeleton and draw out a clear expression related to shinkabe construction.
Today, few people even in Japan choose a Japanese-style house. Tatami (tatami: a traditional floor finish made from woven rush grass) and tokonoma have gradually disappeared, and as houses become increasingly closed off, opportunities to experience the changing seasons are being lost. However, the quiet aura of clean tatami, the delicate tension created by the fine lines of tatami edging or shoji lattices, the gentle light filtered through washi paper with the subtle movement of leaf shadows, and the comfortable engawa that blurs the boundary between indoors and out while drawing seasonal breezes into the house—these elements of the Japanese house, I believe, possess a beauty that can be shared across cultures.
At the same time, I hope that such elements will not be lost but instead be carried forward into the future. For that reason, rather than creating something ornate or nostalgic, I aim to create a modest, simple, yet functional and beautiful dwelling: a neutral Japanese house for ordinary people, one that can stand as a new standard for contemporary living.
