Photographer: Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP | ArchDaily

Optical Glass House / Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP

Rayen Sagredo — Sun, 13 Sep 2020 15:00:00 +0000

This house is sited among tall buildings in downtown Hiroshima, overlooking a street with many passing cars and trams. To obtain privacy and tranquility in these surroundings, we placed a garden and optical glass façade on the street side of the house. The garden is visible from all rooms, and the serene soundless scenery of the passing cars and trams imparts richness to life in the house. Sunlight from the east, refracting through the glass, creates beautiful light patterns. Rain striking the water-basin skylight manifests water patterns on the entrance floor. Filtered light through the garden trees flickers on the living room floor, and a super lightweight curtain of sputter-coated metal dances in the wind. Although located downtown in a city, the house enables residents to enjoy the changing light and city moods, as the day passes, and live in awareness of the changing seasons.

From Hospitals to Housing: Facade Construction Details

Danae Santibañez — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 07:35:00 +0000

The facade is the calling card of an architecture project, an often iconic and recognizable element that becomes part of the collective imaginary.

Sayama Lakeside Cemetery Community Hall / Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP

Karen Valenzuela — Sat, 18 Jul 2020 15:00:00 +0000

This cemetery is located in the lush forests of the Sayama hills. The community hall stands midway on a slope above a city. The site enjoys excellent views, but we sought not to open the building fully to its scenery nor, for that matter, to entirely close it. Rather, we wanted to create a space that, while open, would have a degree of closure. To this end, we gathered the service-related rooms in a central, reinforced-concrete core and arranged the visitor lounge and dining rooms around the core on a circular plan open to the exterior.

Nasu Tepee / Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP

Daniel Sánchez — Sat, 30 Nov 2019 17:00:00 +0000

The site is located in Nasu, Tochigi Prefecture, a well-known summer resort. Passing through fields and woodlands, the site lies along the forest path in a grove of mixed trees. Our client is a married couple that enjoys organic farming on the weekends, and their wish was to reserve as much of the environment as possible and to live in the surrounding woods. We avoided large-scale construction and a majority of felling to build the rooms on the few remaining flat surfaces of the sloping ground, as if sewing them together.

House C / Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP

Kritiana Ross — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The focus in designing this house was to make it an extension of gardening. The soil at the site consists of a uniformly soft material that covers the surrounding area. People living in this region have been making this soil into mounds, kneading it and firing it into pottery for many centuries. Looking at the soil and touching it with your hands brings about certain emotions. I wanted to give people the opportunity to have this precious experience while living in the home.