Geo Metria by Mount Fuji Architects Studio // Kanagawa, Japan.

To Japan (my but we do get about. Thanks, internet).

Being cheap and simple myself I do love it when architecture follows suit, and makes a virtue of the combination. This little house in the Kanagawa Prefecture is by Mount Fuji Architects Studio. The photos are by Kenichi Suzuki.

Prosaically, this is a two bedroom house on a sloping site. The response to the brief is poetic.

Look at the site – the contours of the land kink at about a twenty degree angle from the horizontal. In deference to this, so does the timber framing. This difference is allowed to imbue the otherwise straightforward interior with a crisscrossed complexity. Two sets of gridded roof beams intersect at different heights, the lower ones sailing across the entire length of the house. The higher beams come to rest on top of these and somewhere in between the distant skies and the structural jointing, magic happens.

The planks of the roof beams fold down and divide the pavilion up into little open rooms. Bookshelves are slotted in between – how I love a room full of books. How I love ‘just enough’ spaces. How I wish I’d thought of this! The ceiling is jacked up so that the space opens to views out over the landscape below. It’s not a lot but it’s really beautiful.

The floor slab is detailed so as to float above the ground line, adding to the lightness and almost impermanent character of the house. That hefty fairfaced concrete plinth notwithstanding, you could almost see this house fluttering away on a breeze.

The materials are humble. Concrete, timber, and glass. The fibrous ceiling panels remind me of some pretty hideous structures from my childhood in rural New South Wales, but here they are perfect – just think how garish crisp white plasterboard would be in their stead. The lights are just bracket fittings with naked bulbs. The discretion here is absolute. The whole place looks like a masterful (masterful!) reworking of case study house ideals – keep it simple, keep it cheap, make it fantastic.

We’ll leave it there. What a treat, what a treat.

Ende.

Text by Luke Moloney for Yellowtrace.

[Photography by Kenichi Suzuki. Images courtesy of Mount Fuji Architects Studio.]