Home of the Earth
Okazaki, Japan
A house in Okazaki, Aichi, that the architect designed for his parents, keeping them waiting more than ten years: design began in 2008 and the house was finished at the end of 2018. Okazaki has about 400 years of granite quarrying behind it, and the house recreates that landscape with garden walls of local granite, cedar bark cladding and a roof of natural slate, the stonework laid without drawings.
The plan runs in four bands around a courtyard, outer room to half-outer, half-inner and inner, so outside becomes inside by degrees, and the low eaves let the planting run unbroken across the site. From the road the big slate roof seems to float among the trees, which is the view in this picture. The house took the Aichi Governor's Prize, the top award, at the 2019 Smile Aichi Housing Awards, and the Grand Prize at the Japan Federation of Architects and Building Engineers Associations' first Architectural Works Award in 2021.
Ken Nishiguchi
An architect born and based in Okazaki, where he founded his one-person practice, Ken Nishiguchi Architects, in 2007. Alongside the practice he teaches at schools including Musashino Art University and Meijo University.
Architecture Ken Nishiguchi (@ken_nishiguchi). Photography Sasakuraya, Yohei Sasakura and ToLoLo Studios (@tololo_nana, @tololostudio). Seen via @archfeed_.
The picture comes from this post on Instagram.
Researched August 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.