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Architects: GOSIZE
- Area: 61 m²
- Year: 2018
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Photographs:Akiyoshi Fukuzawa
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Manufacturers: Grohe, Flos, Hunter Douglas, ModuleX, Vola
Text description provided by the architects. This is the combined residence and office of the project’s architect. Located in a beautiful natural setting selected as one of Japan’s top one hundred sited for viewing cherry blossoms, the building’s exterior features a natural stone base intended to blend in with the environment.
Seeking to reflect a distinctive Japanese aesthetic that favors natural materials and finds beauty in simplicity, the design emphasizes plainness and blank spaces in the interior. Because the boundary between these interior spaces and the outside world is ambiguous, a wealth of connections and depths arise, resulting in a high-quality living and working environment that leaves lingering impressions.
The doma, a tiled area on the first floor that can be walked on without removing shoes, has a double-height ceiling and opens inward onto a private courtyard and water feature where subtle seasonal changes in the plants and the sound of water prompt a keen awareness of time. The spaces become increasingly open to the outside world as they move upwards, offering a chance to come into sync with nature and open oneself to the surrounding landscape.
It is my hope that this residence and office will serve as a place to reconnect with the nature-based wisdom and spiritual culture our ancestors have passed down to us, as well as to quietly reexamine my own life.
