House design in Japan with rectangular sizes
House design in Japan with rectangular sizes,
Nestled between sea and mountain in Kanagawa, Japan,
the house is called ONE Residence and designed by local firm ambientdesigns.
It is an all-white, minimalist volume that embraces its irregular city setting.
The project stems from the client’s desire to enjoy the living spaces defined by the rectangular layouts and warm surface,
which balances privacy and openness to the site’s rich surroundings and topography.

As a method of securing the rectangular planes,
the architects adopted the usual 910 mm grid in Japanese wooden architecture.
Applied to the site, ambientdesigns defined a building plane consisting of three grids,
It is based on axes parallel to three from several different angles of the site boundaries:
north, west and south.
Use rectangular planes with a three-grid layout
According to the ambiendtdesigns team,
the grille secures the rectangular plan while realizing traditional timber construction in its purest form.
It is a useful approach from a structural and economic point of view on the one hand,
revealing architecture resulting from an ‘artificial form’, based on the logic of human construction.

On the other hand, the boundaries of an irregular site
without perpendicularity can be considered a “natural form” created by topography.
Together, this blend creates an “eclecticism of naturalness and resourcefulness”.
By creating a single building on a grid of three site boundaries,
the design aimed to create an architecture that is an eclectic mix of the natural and the artificial.

The grid acts as a “center line”, which is an architectural design technique.
Where the project tries to blend the artificial and the natural through an architectural method.