The 10 most beautiful design houses in Japan How to interpret a thousand-year-old tradition in modern terms

To understand contemporary Japanese architecture, one must understand its challenges. At the peak of the modernist movement, in the early decades of the twentieth century, Western architects had to strive to simplify and essentialize the style of European housing, which came out of the nineteenth century laden with frills, friezes and columns inherited from centuries of tradition. Things went differently in Japan, a country where all the arts – and therefore not just architecture – had always been inspired by the concepts of linearity and simplicity, while not renouncing their intellectual complexity. What is modern for the West is tradition in Japan – a tradition that has given birth, today, to design houses that, although formally distant from pure tradition, remain close to them in spirit.

For this reason, nss magazine has compiled a list of the ten most beautiful design houses in Japan.

Moriyama House - Ryue Nishizawa

This Escherian house, also built by Yo Shimada-led studio Tato Architects, is located in Osaka and is organized in a succession of triangular and rectangular floors that create sixteen different levels that rise towards the roof terrace following a spiral movement. There are no stairs but wooden blocks that are used as steps – a construction aimed at giving a sense of expansive space despite the small size that also takes advantage of a series of hidden compartments such as handouts and cabinets.