Photographer: Yasuhiro Nakayama | ArchDaily

House in Koganei, SA House / OFA (OfficeForArchitects) Architectural Design Office

Miwa Negoro — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 02:00:00 +0000

This project is a two-story timber house situated in a quiet suburban neighborhood adjacent to an urban park on the outskirts of Tokyo. The project began with a shared vision between the client and the architect: to place a "tunnel of greenery" at the center of the home. The design process, therefore, started with the careful selection of a site capable of realizing this idea. Benefiting from the lush trees of the park extending to the north, the internal space incorporates a generous opening that frames the landscape and draws views deep into the house, establishing the integration of greenery as the principal architectural theme.

Hokuriku Residence No.3 / Chidori Studio

Hana Abdel — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 03:00:00 +0000

“Incorporating a multi-layered townscape” - Attracted by the spacious site and the surrounding environment with its old townscape at the foot of Mt. Hakusan, one of Japan's three sacred mountains, the young couple sought a one-story house with a large garden and open living, dining, and kitchen areas. Thanks to the clean water flowing from the mountains, traditional industries such as sake breweries, soy sauce, miso, and koji still remain in the surrounding area, and this site is also surrounded by a group of sake brewery buildings.

Hokuriku Residence No.2 / Chidori Studio

Hana Abdel — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“Contributes marginal space to the city” - This two-story wooden house is located in an educational area of Kanazawa City. The surrounding area has greenery and spacious public spaces, including parks, schools, and a stadium. The vacant lot behind the main site is the site of a former bank dormitory, with a clear view of the trees of the stadium beyond. The client requested "a house with large openings to the landscape beyond the vacant lot. However, the vacant lot behind the site has the potential for a large building to be constructed in the future.

How to Virtually Enlarge Spaces Using Good Lighting

Lilly Cao — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 08:30:00 +0000

One of the most essential aspects of interior design is lighting – an element that can make or break an interior space of any size or material. Yet good lighting can be especially important for smaller or more crowded spaces, making them feel larger and more open even when their literal dimensions haven’t changed. In turn, larger spaces with poor lighting may feel smaller and less welcoming than they have the potential to be. To make interiors feel aptly large and well lit, designers can rely on several tried and true methods that make the most of a space, from using the right shades and types of lights to placing them in the best locations to integrating other elements that best complement existing lighting. These strategies, as well as several examples of their application, are listed below.

Places in Karuizawa Villa / Takahiro Endo Architects Office

Pilar Caballero — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 06:00:00 +0000

A “place” to receive experiences - This is a plan to rebuild a villa for 14 people in four families. The owner's family had owned a villa in this area for many years and had vast experience. The site is in a vast forest of chestnut, fir, and dogwood trees, and the neighboring houses cannot be seen. In the summer, they cooled watermelons in the stream at the bottom of the valley, and in the fall, they went out into the forest to pick chestnuts and the way the owners spent their time was to learn from what they saw.

Folding Screen Row House / DOG

Hana Abdel — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 20:00:00 +0000

This project is a four-unit row house including the owner's residence, located in Daita, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo. Originally, a kindergarten was built on an about 600 sqm plot of land including the adjoining land to the north, which was demolished and inherited in sections to obtain a relatively rectangular plot of 300 sqm, on which home and rental house were built. The building was placed on the perimeter of the site to avoid using up the floor-area ratio and to reduce sound insulation between units, which is a weak point of wooden row houses, and the south side of the building was built as a one-story structure to allow sufficient light into the courtyard, which is also the approach to each unit.

PEERLESS Store / MURAYAMA + KATO ARCHITECTURE

Hana Abdel — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 19:00:00 +0000

The shop design for the flagship store of the Japanese fashion brand “visvim” in Shibuya PARCO. One of the important conditions for this space is natural light, even if it’s located within the context of a commercial building. Here, we decided to create the earthen floor full of natural light, to get the feeling of wilderness.

House or Garden and Margin / MURAYAMA + KATO ARCHITECTURE

Bianca Valentina Roșescu — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The renovation project of a non-reconstructable house. To keep the excess building-to-land ratio within the legal limit, the south side of the house, where the ground had subsided, was reduced, the east and west sheds were removed, and the remaining north side building was structurally sounded.　

Hokuriku Residence No.1 / Chidori Studio

Bianca Valentina Roșescu — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 03:00:00 +0000

‘’Hokuriku Residence’’ series are experiments for discovering the possibilities of architecture through the historical connections of this area. ”Hokuriku’’, in the northwest part of Japan, is located by the sea at a place with heavy rain and snow. In response to them, how to create an outdoor space for rain and snow, coloring suitable for cloudy weather, and handling daylight in winter are important themes.

Kitakamakura House / Takahiro Endo Architects Office

Hana Abdel — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 20:00:00 +0000

Kitakamakura house, Sociality of the house /open to the local community. The house is located on the mountain in Kitakamakura old and very quiet residential area. In this neighborhood, you can find many windows with closed curtains and shutters, it almost looks like a silent gesture of residents, refuses to socialize with the local community.

Nikotama Terrace Cooperative House / Okuno Architectural Planning

Hana Abdel — Mon, 20 Dec 2021 20:00:00 +0000

The Nikotama Terrace is a cooperative house located on the hillside of the Kokubunji cliff line that runs from Futakotamagawa to Kinuta. The site faces the slope called "Mamushizawa", which used to be a valley, and is protected by the cliff line ordinance. It is a green place, like a mountain, surrounded by native species of the Musashino Plateau. There is also a large retaining wall on the site to eliminate the height difference. The main concern was how to confront this retaining wall and the building while making the best use of the height difference in the surrounding area? The design answer came as a row house (10 dwelling units) with a green valley.

Polycarbonate for Interiors: 8 Examples of Translucent Architecture Indoors

Lilly Cao — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 01:30:00 +0000

Diversifying the materials of an interior space can greatly improve its depth and visual interest. At the same time, adding partitions or other delineations of internal space can help organize flow, circulation, and visibility. Polycarbonate, a type of lightweight, durable thermoplastic, is an excellent medium for both functions.

Open Sky House / Yoshitaka Suzuki and Associates

Hana Abdel — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a small house for a family of five, a couple and three children. Land prices in the city are expensive and there is a system of blatant disparities depending on location and buildable area. Even the land they managed to acquire was a harsh reality, as only a small house (61 square meters of allowable gross floor area) could be built on, with a maximum of 12 square meters per person.

F.I.L. FUKUOKA Shop / MURAYAMA + KATO ARCHITECTURE

Collin Chen — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The shop design for the flagship store of the Japanese fashion brand “visvim.” The shop is facing the serene street, with a hundred planted Zelkova trees and brick pavement. Vintage apartments standing along this street match the calm cityscape and nearby, there is the museum designed by Kunio Mayekawa, which has elegant vaulted ceiling and brick-cladding.

Photo Studio / Hiroki Tominaga-Atelier + Yae Fujima

Paula Pintos — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 03:00:00 +0000

This building is a photo studio for taking pictures of products and magazines in a residential scene. This building was built under the steel frame of an existing warehouse as an independent wooden one-story house. And it was required to combine the several residential scenes. At first, a photo studio needs light from the south.

Small Core House in Ochiaigawa / UNIT-O

Diego Hernández — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This project is a minimal house for a young couple built along the riverside of Ochiaigawa of Higashikurume, Tokyo prefecture, in Japan. The house is built next to the greenest zone of Ochiaigawa, being a simple and white volume like a "TOFU" individualizes to it surrounding environment.