Ogaki House was designed by Katsutoshi Sasaki + Associates for a couple with four daughters living in Gifu, Japan. Though the house is quite long and narrow, the architects made the unusual decision… Continue reading
While the outside of this small house looks like a jumbled stack of boxes, the inside is anything but boxy. Rather than having closed off rooms, Tetsuo Kondo Architects designed it to be… Continue reading
This unassuming house in Shiga, Japan is home to a young family. Architects ALTS Design Office designed the 71.3 m2 (768 ft2) floor plan around the combined living and dining room at the back of… Continue reading
“Rooms that follow the landscape” consists of a series of room strung in an arc across a small hillside in Japan. Studio ON Design Partners angled each room 15 degrees from the next… Continue reading
This small house sits on a forested site at the base of Mount Daisen in western Japan. While designed for modern living, the dwelling incorporates features from old-time Japanese houses. It was designed… Continue reading
Cross House is home to a novelist whose wish was to have an isolated house in a quiet location surrounded by greenery. That is not easily achieved in the suburbs of Tokyo, but… Continue reading
This small house, designed for a family of four, has a sculptural shape that from some angles resembles an iceberg. And like an iceberg, part of the house lies below the surface. The… Continue reading
When their lives were abruptly thrown into turmoil by the destruction of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, many people had little choice but to leave the devastated region. One family with two… Continue reading
House C sits on a narrow coastal plain between the sea and the mountains of Chiba, Japan. The owners, a couple with a young child, wanted a weekend house that would give them… Continue reading
This small house with a triangular floor plan sits on a narrow sliver of lot wedged between a road and a river channel in west Tokyo. Designing the house for a couple and… Continue reading
Danchi Hutch is a basic box of a house, humble and inexpensive but with a very functional layout. It has a carriage house design, with a small upper floor living area over a… Continue reading
The garden of an older home is the setting for this outwardly-focused house. A newly-wed couple were offered space to build their new home in his parent’s backyard. They wanted a small house… Continue reading
In Japan, a “forest bath” refers to taking a leisurely stroll in the woods while breathing in the scent of the trees as a form of natural aromatherapy. The clients for this summer… Continue reading
When you are standing in a forest, you can see the trees immediately in front of you, and through the spaces between them you can see the trees just beyond, and then some… Continue reading
This small house in Hiroshima might not attract much attention from passersby were it not for the blue roofing material applied to the walls. Taking a closer look, they might notice the lack… Continue reading
Io is a compact house designed and built for a young family in Anjō, a small city in Japan. Architect Osamu Morishita designed the house to encourage social interaction among its occupants and… Continue reading
House in Setagawa occupies a compact east-facing lot in a densely-built suburb of Tokyo. With little room in which to build on a tight lot, the most common solution is to make the… Continue reading
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… Continue reading
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… Continue reading
The Skyward House is a small cottage designed for a single woman by architect Kazuhiko Kishimoto of acaa. The cottage looks unassuming from the road below but it has a remarkable interior designed… Continue reading
The Kishigawa Residence is a small house located in a rural area of scattered houses set among rice fields. It was built for a sushi chef whose hobby is cars. Those interests led… Continue reading
Tokyo is home to many small houses shoehorned onto even smaller lots. Today’s house sits on a lot so small, it was previously used as a single parking space. With only 23.1 m2 (249 ft2)… Continue reading
This small house occupies a clearing in the forest near the Habuka ski area in the Japanese Alps. The wedge-shaped home was designed by architect Satoshi Irei to be used as a ski… Continue reading
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… Continue reading
