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Architects: YSLA Architects
- Area: 70 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Munetaka Onodera
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Structure Engineers: yAt structure design office limited liability Company, yAt Structure Design Office
Text description provided by the architects. A “Home Around the Forest” is a weekend house in Karuizawa, Japan, for a couple with two children living in central Tokyo. The family was familiar with the area, and they stayed for many holidays in hotels nearby. Finally, they decided that they wanted their own hotel room in the forest, a 70sqm suite for a family of five to make the most of their holidays.
In YSLA, we wanted to maximize the quality time that the family would spend in the house, and for that, we proposed they slow down from city life and reconnect with nature. We like them to feel wider and feel better, to live around the forest, and to take in its atmosphere.
This is what in Japanese culture is known as Shinrin-Yoku, the mindfulness practice of bath forest. It’s known that walking around the forest can upgrade creativity, boost immunity, and diminish stress. In other words, it helps you to achieve the Latin proverb “a healthy mind in a healthy body.”
To fulfill this connection, we build a home around the forest, a house in which the corridor extends to the forest, and embrace it as an extension. The forest became part of the living room; the line between interior and exterior became non-existent, and they could feel wider and better. The family can enjoy the totality of its nature, walk, run, bike, skate… At the end of their holidays, the family can go back to Tokyo feeling they had a healthy, balanced, and full of happy days together.
