Small House Bliss

Small house designs with big impact

Category Archives: minimalist design


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Matsubara House by Hiroyuki Ito

Matsubara House by Hiroyuki Ito of O.F.D.A.

This small house in a residential neighborhood of Tokyo has an unusual angled facade that gives the house a different appearance when approached from either side. Architect Hiroyuki Ito of O.F.D.A. Associates designed the floor plan as a rough hexagon. By doing this, the main windows at the front and back are angled to the sides rather than directly facing the houses opposite, improving the views from inside and allowing more light to enter. The angled front facade also let the architect push the house closer to the street while still integrating with the larger frontyard setbacks of the neighboring houses.

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House On a Mountainside by Keiichi Hayashi

House On a Mountainside, a small house by Keiichi Hayashi

This small house rises above the trees on a forested hillside. To take full advantage of the available views, architect Keiichi Hayashi stacked the rooms vertically, creating a simple tall box of a house. Working with the slope, he opted for a split-level plan that divides the 96 m2 (1,033 ft2) of space over a total of six levels, each dedicated to a single function. Starting at the bottom, they are the entry foyer, children’s bedroom, bathroom, parent’s bedroom, living room, and kitchen/dining room at the top of the house. The six levels are connected by a switchback staircase in the middle of the small floor plan.

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K House by D.I.G Architects

K House, a small house in Japan by D.I.G Architects

K House is perched on a steeply sloped site overlooking the city of Nagoya, Japan. The site offered great views but was a challenge to build on, with hardly enough flat space to park a car, let alone a house. D.I.G Architects solved the problem by tucking the house partly into the hillside, leaving the rest to cantilever dramatically over the slope below.

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Two small houses by Architekturbüro Scheder

Zwei Kleine Häuser by Architekturbüro Scheder

This pair of identical small houses is located on the outskirts of Kaiserslautern, a historic city in western Germany. They stand out from their neighbors with minimalist black-stained wood exteriors embellished only by the crisp white window frames. The tall and narrow houses are placed at right angles to each other on the sloped lot, giving both views over the neighboring rooftops to a church and a historic castle. To take full advantage of those views, the architects at Architekturbüro Scheder opted for a reverse floor plan, placing the living areas on the highest of the three floors.

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The perplexing House in Inokashira by Studio NOA

House in Inokashira by Studio NOA

This small house in Tokyo is wedged onto a thin strip of land between the street and a steep forested hillside. The narrow lot offered no real choice as to where to place the dwelling. The architects from Studio NOA dug the house into the toe of the hill, holding back the slope with a large retaining wall that also forms the back wall of the house. The footprint of the house tapers and has a slight bend as it conforms to the shape of the lot.

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Casa Mar Azul by BAK Arquitectos

Casa Mar Azul by BAK Arquitectos

This small house is located near Mar Azul, a coastal village south of Buenos Aires. It was placed among a grove of pine trees, with holes incorporated into the deck and roof overhang to accommodate the existing trees. The goal for BAK Arquitectos was to design a low-cost and low-maintenance summer house.

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Solar Decathlon Europe: Ekihouse

photo by Jesús Martín Ruiz | UPV/EHU eki project

Continuing our coverage of Solar Decathlon Europe 2012, today we take a look at Ekihouse (“sun house”), a small prefabricated house in two modules. Ekihouse is the result of a collaboration between two Basque schools, Universidad del País Vasco and Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea. It has a simple floor plan with the kitchen and utilities at one end, the bathroom at the other, and an open loft-like living space in the middle. The living area is enclosed by triple-paned sliding patio doors on the two remaining sides.

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The Stripe House by GAAGA Studio Architecture

photo by Marcel van der Burg

The Stripe House is a new home in the Netherlands designed by GAAGA Studio Architecture. It is built in a new neighborhood of rowhouses where the parcels were sold as bare land and each owner had their house individually designed. Unlike most of the neighboring houses, the Stripe House is set back from the front property line. Because the house fronts on a narrow pedestrian street, the architects increased the separation from the houses opposite by creating a small entry court that takes up a quarter of the lot. They compensated for the lost building area by going up with a three story structure. The name Stripe House refers to the horizontal grooves troweled into the exterior stucco finish, adding texture and refinement to facades that would otherwise have appeared somewhat monotonous. The other obvious feature of the exterior is the enormous, storefront-sized windows. Note though that some of the windows are flanked by white panels that make them appear larger than they really are.

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