Article source: Takeru Shoji Architects.Co.,Ltd. 

Located in the mountain basin of Uonuma, Japan; the city does a complete turnaround from warm humid summers to snow covered winters. Here the temperature can reach up to 30 degree celcius in summers with over 80% humidity, while in winter the city might receive snowfall reaching up to 3 meters in height. Thus, a house built in this region needs to not only face the adversities of the land but also create an environment where the residents can thrive within their surroundings.

The conventional design approach to counter this snow is to elevate the living spaces, use mechanical means to melt rooftop snow using ground water and have thick walls with additional insulation. But all these measures create an isolation between the inside and outside. We didn't want to carry forward this convention of separating the inside and outside thus in essence propagating the feeling of being out of place within one’s own environment. We wanted the residents to fully enjoy their landscape and its setting. Thus an important factor of the design was to make this connection between the building and snow more direct.

Image Courtesy © Noriki Matsuzaki

• Architects: Takeru Shoji Architects.Co.,Ltd.
• Project: M house
• Location: uonuma-city, niigata-prefecture, Japan
• Photography: Noriki Matsuzaki
  
• Lead Architects: Takeru Shoji
• Design Team: Yuki Hirano, Ryoichi Aida
• Engineering: Tetsuya Tanaka (Tetsuya Tanaka Structural Engineers)
• Collaborators: Contractor – Kenji Uchida (Kiryu Kougyo)
• Gross Built Area: 93.92 msq
• Completion Year: 2017

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