Kiyotoshi Mori + Natsuko Kawamura / MDS

The house sits on a ridge of a hill in Kamakura, one of Japan’s ancient capitals . The site is covered in a typical soil of the area—soft sediments over the surface of bedrock. The site was above the road level by just the thickness of the soil, which we chose to remove by the shape of the building footprint to put the foundation directly on the bedrock. The approach from the road is dug into this soil as well, gently sloping down towards the ground level of the house. By placing a structurally stable pyramid roof over the simple square-shaped plan of the house, we created a pillarless space under the single roof.

The space was then vertically diversified by adding another floor above the ground and levitating the roof over the earth. On the upper floor, the ceiling lowers down towards the roof edge and heightens up in the center. Each of the four edges of the roof opens to a different view: the mountain, the valley, the village and the sky.

Responding to these rich surroundings, each edge is flipped up to make four different spaces with different views. In the corners where the roof edges were left unflipped , the upper level floor is cut through to the ground to connect the two levels.

The residents are the couple and two cats, but the design is not inclined to either the people or the pets. Our aim was to create a small box that circulates even the slight signs of each one’s presence, where everyone can spend time in their own way.