Type: New house
Location: Kamogawa-shi, Chiba
Method: Traditional Japanese wooden construction
Tsuchikabe walls reinforced by bamboo laths
Total floor area: 59.5 m2
Completed: 2011
Design/construction: Seyseysha

This Japanese one-story house is on the mountain in Kamogawa-shi, Chiba.
The house which produces an atmosphere of old Japanese-style house called Kominka, was built through traditional construction methods and granite cornerstones called ishibadate (a setup where pillars stand on stones instead of being fixed deep into the ground).
It’s adopted a compact plan of the old farmer’s house that reminds us a good old days.

By taking large opening parts on three sides, the wind passes through pleasantly from the south porch into the whole house.
To take in some vegetables which they grows from their garden directly, the kitchen is on an earth floor in the house.
A bath is an old style wooden bath tub and they heat the water by firewood.

For the building materials, we used solid cedar, cypress, red pine, and chestnut, all from Japan. All the walls follow the age-old form: clay reinforced by bamboo laths. It’s an ultimate ecological house that live close together with around nature. A family of four lives in the house.


(This house appeared in the December 2011 issue of Jūtaku Kenchiku and Issue 44 of Sumu.)