
F Residence by Go Fujita / Gosize
Situated in a quiet residential area in the city of Nishinomiya, Hyogo prefecture, a supreme natural setting that is proudly counted among Japan’s top one hundred sites for viewing cherry blossoms, F Residence is the work of local practice Gosize. This project in fact, bears a special significance to the firm, being the home and office of the studio’s owner Go Fujita, who founded Gosize in 1999. A complex brief that combines live and work areas did not deter Fujita from employing his signature approach to architecture; the studio excels in creating contemporary interiors that draw on the country’s traditions. ‘Seeking to reflect a distinctive Japanese aesthetic that favours natural materials and finds beauty in simplicity, the design emphasizes plainness and blank spaces in the interior,’ explain the architects. Photography: Nacasa & Partners

Stone House by Hiroshi Sambuichi
Even a cursory glance at Hiroshi Sambuichi’s oeuvre shows it’s clear that the Japanese architecture master doesn’t do conventional. First there was his Air House, an almost transparent sliver of glass and wood built on a spectacular castle moat in Hagi. Then there was Sloping North House, a family home perched on a vertiginous rise in Yamaguchi. There’s also the dental clinic, near Hiroshima, which he decked out like an upturned wooden boat with vegetation on the roof. And we have Stone House, a family home built in the mountains on a bed of crushed river stones. Sambuichi has already been garlanded with awards for buildings that manage to be both good-looking and good to the environment. Although he takes the eco issue very seriously, there’s nothing earnest about his designs. He thinks very carefully about the materials he uses (and often reuses) and dreams up ingenious ways for his buildings to operate with as little heating and air conditioning as possible. Additional writing: Fiona Wilson. Photography: Shinkenchu-sha

Daita, Tokyo by Ryuichi Sasaki / Sasaki Architecture
Set in the western part of the mega-city of Tokyo, among tall, old trees and low mansions, Daita is a design-led housing developent of 16 apartments. Its author, Sasaki Architecture, worked with a clean, monolithic concrete main body, creating highlights by inserting L-shaped colored stainless steel openings across the facade. This design move was inspired by the surrounding foliage, creating a dialogue between architecture and its setting, as the contemporary design plays with contrasts between soft and hard, natural and man-made. Inside, minimalist white-painted and exposed concrete and geometric openings punched into walls and roofs create a serene, minimalist environment. In multi-family housing schemes, architects need to ‘create a unique ‘one world view’ for the whole project,’ says Ryuichi Sasaki. It is also impontant to create ‘multiple spatial cues for the dweller, so they can choose multiple ways of living within this one design,’ he adds. Photography: Takumi Ota

Okayama House by Tsubasa Iwahashi
Japanese architect Tsubasa Iwahashi has added a new timber house to an existing house in a forest in Okayama, Japan. The ‘hut’ as he calls it, is a comfortable house for two filled with daylight and connected to the surrounding nature with open-air spaces and wide windows. Iwahashi designed the hut for a couple who wanted to live closer to their family. There’s sufficient independence to the new living space because of the surrounding forest, but also a beautiful connectivity between the two structures. Additional writing: Harriet Thorpe. Photography: Photography: Takumi Ota

FLAT369 by No555
t’s not uncommon for modern Japanese housing to be squeezed into tight plots and dense urban situations. It is a testament to an architect’s skill when functionality and generosity of space shine through, despite challenging conditions. This is also the case with Flat369, a multi-family residential project created by Kanagawa-based, Japanese architecture studio No.555 and set in the heart of Tokyo’s Setagaya district. The brief for the scheme, called for the creation of a six-unit apartment building in an extremely narrow lot, previously used as parking space. No.555’s founder, Yokohama-trained architect Takuya Tsuchida, has been leading his agile, boutique office since 2005, focusing on a range of elegant residential, commercial and cultural projects. Regardless of the typology, the studio’s approach favours clean, geometric volumes, natural materials and neutral colour tones, resulting in subtle architectural compositions that feel calming, nodding to minimalist architecture – a path Tsuchida also took with Flat369. Photography: Masatoshi Mori

T Residence by Matsuyama Architect and Associates
Set in the sleepy, commuter belt of Fukuoka city, T Residence is an intriguing, angular house, the brainchild of locally based Japanese architecture studio Matsuyama Architect and Associates. Created for a client who has lived in the area since their childhood, the home replaces an older residence on the site, in an effort to modernise the domestic space on offer and create a house that is fit for purpose and the lives of its new inhabitants – a couple and their children. ’The townscape was established based on the grid street plan by a 1960s administrative land-zoning project to provide plots for new houses. Since then, it has been constantly regenerated by the replacing of existing buildings with new houses in recent years,’ say the architects. Even though the design team created something bold and contemporary, at the same time, the architects wanted to be respectful to the overall character of the area, which is largely populated by relatively modest, two-storey structures. As a result, the new design kept a fairly clean, opaque frontage in a volume divided into horizontal blocks, which were stacked up either slightly set back or brought forward towards the street, creating a sculptural overall impression. This external envelope is made out of weatherboard-shaped formwork concrete, which mixes with glazed sections on the upper levels that allow only hints of the life inside. Photography: Toshihisa Isii