tommy (高根沢の家)
Takanezawa, Japan
This is a two-storey timber house in the town of Takanezawa, in Tochigi Prefecture, designed by the Utsunomiya architect Kazuki Okamoto and completed in 2019. His practice, Kazuki Okamoto Architect & Associates, calls it tommy, and 高根沢の家, the house in Takanezawa. It is a SHAKU house, the joint housing brand of the practice and the Nikko sawmill Nikko Mokuzai Kogyo, which built it. The plan turns on a tall void: living, dining and kitchen sit under it, the living room floor is dug down, and a study corner for the children on the upper floor looks across it. The floors and stairs are Nikko hinoki, the entrance uses Oya stone and Nikko cedar, and the kitchen, dining table, dresser, sofa and bedhead were all made to the practice's design.
The card is the first frame of the practice's post and one of the photographs on its own project page, the full view of the living room and kitchen: the sunken lounge in the foreground, the double-height void above it, and the study balcony over the kitchen with its floor joists left exposed and cantilevered out into the void. In the practice's words: 「掘り込まれたリビング。桧の床の心地よい足ざわり。 大きな開口部。上部は広々とした吹抜空間。」, a sunken living room, the pleasant feel of hinoki underfoot, large openings and a generous void above. And on why it feels settled despite the height: 「高い吹抜をもつ空間ですが、照明を天井につけず低めに設定することやリビングを彫り込むことで、ぐっと重心が下がり、落ち着いた趣きに。」, the lights kept off the ceiling and set low, and the living room carved down, drop the centre of gravity and give it a settled feel.
Kazuki Okamoto Architect & Associates
Kazuki Okamoto Architect & Associates is the practice of Kazuki Okamoto, a first-class registered architect born in 1983 in Tochigi's Shioya District, the same district as this house. He opened the office in Utsunomiya in May 2016 and incorporated it in March 2019; it works across the Kanto region and Fukushima, and with the Nikko timber miller Nikko Mokuzai Kogyo it runs the housing brand SHAKU.
Kazuki Okamoto Architect & Associates (@okamoto_aa). Photography Tsutsumi Yano.
The picture comes from this post on Instagram.
Researched September 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.