Tokyo maze-home blurs boundary urban/nature, indoors/outdoors by Kirsten Dirksen on May 31, 2020 Step inside Boundary House and enter a maze of hallways, rooms, open-air patios designed to blur the boundary between inside …
World’s oldest family business & meaning of life/work by Kirsten Dirksen on December 17, 2017 The Hōshi family has run the inn bearing their name in Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture for 1,300 years. Forty six generations …
Tokyo’s impermanent skinny house made to age well with owners by Kirsten Dirksen on March 19, 2017 Inheritance taxes on land in Japan means plots often get smaller as they are passed on. This “divide and sell” …
Indoor/outdoor budget home in Japan: affordable & permeable by Kirsten Dirksen on January 16, 2017 When a family of four asked architect Takeshi Hosaka to create a home embedded in nature on a small Tokyo …
Permeable Yokohama home blends with garden & protects from street by Kirsten Dirksen on April 25, 2016 When a Yokohama couple asked architect Takeshi Hosaka to design a home “in which we feel as if we are …
Gem-shaped homestudio for couple & kid maximizes space/light by Nicolás Boullosa on April 4, 2016 When Kyoto-based Alphaville Architects were asked to create a home/studio space for a couple and their son on a small …
Terunobu’s floating tea houses: real-life Studio Ghibli by Kirsten Dirksen on March 13, 2016 The buildings designed by Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori seem straight out of a fairytale, but it’s his treehouses- with names …
Cube hut becomes tiny house inside small Kyoto office building by Kirsten Dirksen on February 21, 2016 When Tada Masaharu and Shojiro Endo began renting a crumbling machiya (a traditional townhouse typical of Kyoto, Japan), they wanted …
8 micro-studios reassembled as Cubist family home in Japan by Kirsten Dirksen on January 4, 2016 With most of their micro-studios unrented, a family in Chiba, Japan was ready to demolish their 8-unit apartment building, but …
Capsule hotel, ancient city: sleeping in a Kyoto pod for $40 by Kirsten Dirksen on December 14, 2015 In the late ‘70s, Metabolist architect Kisho Kurokawa (designer of the Nakagin capsule tower) dreamt up “a hotel for 2001”. The …