Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

Tokyo architects Naoi have completed a three-tiered woodland summerhouse at Japanese holiday spot Nasu Kogen.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

Named Tiered Lodge, the split-level house contains a kitchen and dining room on its lower floor, a living room on the middle level and a mezzanine loft and bedroom above.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

Large parts of the facade slide open to help cool the house during the warm summer months.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

Residents enter the house across a decked balcony and seating area, which leads straight into the lower floor dining room.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

Naoi also recently completed a square house with an off-centre courtyard – see it here.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

Photography is by Hiroshi Ueda.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

Here’s some more text from the architects:


Tiered Lodge

For this project, we were commissioned to build a second home for a husband-and-wife couple and their young son. The client requested a simple space that would allow him to take a step back from the daily demands of his busy schedule and help to rejuvenate his body and mind.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

The site is located in Nasu Kogen, a well-known summer resort area in Japan that lies at an altitude of 1,000m. Dense groves of deciduous trees can be found nearby, making the area a popular retreat during the sweltering summer months. In the winter, however, temperatures drop below freezing point, and snowfall of up to 80cm has been recorded.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

Elevation varies a total of 8m across the entire site running from east to west. Making use of this sloping gradient, we decided to design a residence that would create a sense of continuity with the forest around it.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

The first step was to configure two volumes lying next to each other that corresponded to the contours of the terrain, and then to shift these volumes along both the horizontal and vertical axes. Through this process, we were able to create a level surface that could bridge the gap between the cross-section of the lodge and the forest outside it, while also prompting an awareness of changes in the topography of the site.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

The space that emerged as a result of this elevation difference and shifts in the surface of the floor showcases subtle variations in the size of each volume, the windows, and the quality of the light in each interior. This structure enabled us to endow what is essentially a single-roomed space with remarkable depth and variation.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

The dining and kitchen area, which opens directly onto the outdoor terrace and features an open stairwell, is situated in the southwest corner of the site, making it a fluid space with a distinctively bright, open quality.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

The living room situated on the far eastern end of the site, on the other hand, is configured as a zone of peace and quiet where the family can gather around the fireplace.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

The loft, located on a mezzanine that lies above the living room, is a suspended space lying in mid-air that offers the inhabitants a commanding, elevated view of the trees outside the lodge.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

The sliding doors at the corner of the dining and living area, which can be stowed inside the wall, give the boundaries between the interior and exterior of the house an ambiguous character. For the façade, special efforts were made to preserve the integrity of the forested landscape by installing exterior walls covered in cedar boards and a continuous series of slit windows.

Tiered Lodge by Naoi Architecture and Design Office

By paying close attention to the possibilities presented by a given site, and giving spatial form to its distinctive qualities, we hope to be able to continue creating buildings that showcase the beauty that belongs to the realm of architecture.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

Open-plan rooms of subtly different proportions are created by an off-centre courtyard in this square house in rural Japan.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

The single-storey residence by Tokyo-based Naoi Architecture & Design Office has sliding doors in the exterior walls that open the house up to the surrounding garden.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

Grass mounds shelter the house and define the limits of the garden.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

A cloak of black timber screens the building at the rear, surrounding an outdoor storage area for bins and bicycles.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

Other Japanese houses from the Dezeen archive include one composed of four separate blocks clad in black-stained cedar and another that is split into a series of rooms and platformssee all our stories about Japanese houses here.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

Photography is by Hiroshi Ueda.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

Here are some more details from the architects:


Doughnut House

This project was a residential building for a husband-and-wife couple in rural Ibaraki prefecture.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

The area surrounding the generously-sized plot was not heavily built up, giving the site a calm sense of privacy without too much of the noise, threat of crime and other stresses associated with the city.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

The adjacent areas consisted of a mix of fields and houses, many of which were located on plots of land whose boundaries were not clearly demarcated from each other. With these conditions in mind, we decided to create a home that would consist of “an open space with ambiguous borders and boundaries.”

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

We started by encircling the perimeter of the site with greenery and embankments in order to demarcate the boundaries of the property in a loose fashion, and built a one-storey house that would be covered and hidden by them.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

In this way, we were able to create a site that makes no distinctions whatsoever between its interior and exterior, or between the architecture and its surrounding environment. The embankments serve as a catalyst to produce changes in the landscape visible from the interior, as well as the view from the outside of the house.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

The flat, level surface of the site gives the residence a functional layout, while the internal courtyard produces a sensation of depth and fluidity within the house.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

Situated at a slight distance from the center of the roof, the courtyard also produces variations in the gradient of the ceiling and configuration of the rooms, giving rise to subtle gradations in the overall spatial properties of the house.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

A sense of dialogue between the interior and exterior is reiterated in the internal courtyard and various spaces underneath the eaves of the roof, allowing sunlight and wind to pass through the space.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

We also used the various fittings, eaves and dirt floor as tools for manipulating the boundaries within the house, which maintained both a sense of distance from its surroundings as well as a certain relationship to them.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

By emphasizing the supporting function of the roof and keeping all the sliding doors and other fittings fully open, the interior of the house acquires a certain spatial intensity. The view from the outside, on the other hand, gives the impression of a wide mantle that covers the entire house.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

All of these measures allowed us to ensure that the residence would have a sense of spacious comfort where both nature and architecture are accorded equal value.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

In the future, we hope to continue building homes conducive to this sort of luxury and comfort, creating a simple sort of architecture that seeks to actively open itself up to changes in the four seasons, shifts in the weather and the passage of time in a symbiotic relationship with nature, all without having to rely on the latest building technologies, machinery and devices.

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

Location: Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan
Date of Completion: 2010.8
Principal Use: Private House
Structure: Wooden

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

Building area: 114.56m2
Total Floor Area: 133.27m2
Design Period: 2009.6 – 2010.2
Construction Period: 2010. 3- 2010.8

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office

Architecture and Landscape Design: Naoi Architecture & Design Office
Structural Engineer: Inoue Structural Engineers

Doughnut House by Naoi Architecture & Design Office


See also:

.

Tree House by Mount
Fuji Architects Studio
Belly House by
Tomohiro Hata
Duplex House by
Hidehiro Fukuda