Do you want to stay in a small cabin in the middle of the old woods? This new Japanese home would be just right for you. Japanese architect Takeru Shoji recently showed his new home design situated alongside 200-year-old elm trees.
The house contains two bedrooms which is suitable for a small family. Although it is small, it is tall to allow the residents to see and look at the "foliage of neighboring Japanese elm trees." From the outside, it looked square with plain wood stables placed. However, looking in the interior of the house, one would see the unusual beauty the architect wants to display.
Because of this unusual design, they term it as the "House To Catch The Tree" which is intentionally labelled by a local firm Takeru Shoji Architects for a site near the entrance of the Nagaoka shrine. The entire house design is a concrete example of Japan's Niigata Prefecture.
To those who are not familiar with Niigata Prefecture. Niigata is located in Honshu island bordering the Sea of Japan and including the Sado Island. It's capital city is Niigata. So, with Shoji's "House To Catch The Tree," the house is probably facing the Sea of Japan.
Based from the description, it says, "A series of 200-year-old Japanese elm trees -- known as zelkova serratas -- stand alongside the site, so the design team designed the building to mirror their proportions."
The architects explained why this design is created for the new home. They said, "There were two requirements from the client. Firstly, the house needed to be simple and capable of any future changes. The other was to make good use of the richness of the site."
To achieve this, the structure of the house is a duplicate of how the elm trees look from the outside. Instead of having the rooms facing the tree trunks like the usual house designs out, they design it to face the tree branches. So, they need to make the house tall. There are only two storeys with a height of 8 meters from the ground.
"There is also a large high-level window and a pair of separate mezzanines above the ground floor. One of these leads out to a terrace facing towards the trees," the report added.
The team added, "Since the Japanese zelkova trees are 20 meters in height, we cannot get a view of the verdant branches from mundane windows on the ground floor. Therefore the living room has 3.5 meters of ceiling height, and moreover a large band window."
"We look up at swinging trees in the breeze from the large band window, and we can even touch the trees directly from the terrace at the very end of the loft space."
The "House To Catch A Tree" has an asymmetric roof. This is designed specifically to change the lifestyle of the clients and the seasons and allows the nature to fill in the ambience of the house. It's like staying the comfort in the middle of the forest.
