Type: New house
Location: Chōfu-shi, Tokyo
Method: Traditional Japanese wooden construction
Tsuchikabe walls reinforced by bamboo laths
Total floor area: 96.4 m2
Completed: 2015
Design/construction: Seyseysha

This two-story house in Chōfu-shi, Tokyo, captures the heart of vintage Japanese residential architecture through traditional construction methods.
For the building materials, we used solid cedar, cypress, red pine, and chestnut, all from Japan.
For the through pillar, we used 12 cedar beams (18.08 cm x 18.08 cm each). The log beam supporting the 5.5-m x 7.3-m space on the second floor is red pine from Iwate Prefecture.
All the walls follow the age-old form: clay reinforced by bamboo laths. We used a middle-layer plaster finish (a mixed coating of clay, sand, and stray) for the interior walls and Tosa shikkui handa shiage (a mixture of clay, sand, straw, and Tosa plaster) for the outside walls.

Seyseysha never incorporates any synthetic building materials, so we used tsuchikabe walls (all at least 75 mm thick), 40-mm cedar for the sheathing (the sub-frame under the roofing), and 36-mm Japanese cypress for the floorboards. The thick, solid wood gives the house an insulative integrity, creating a space where the gentle warmth of natural materials keep the residents—a family of four—comfortable year-round.


(This house appeared in the February 2016 issue of Jūtaku Kenchiku.)