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Forest Bath is a summer home located in Nagano, Japan designed by Kyoko Ikuta Architecture Laboratory and Ozeki Architects & Associates. The building is located on a flat site with no opportunity of an extensive view; instead, the architects decided to concentrate the focal point upwards into the sky.
Since the geometry of the residence is triangular, the architects were able to remove a portion of the angular roof to receive more natural lighting and view of the surrounding landscape. The dramatic opening also serves as a private outdoor courtyard. The outdoor space defined the interior layout, too, which is separated into two sections — the bedroom and bath.
What I love more than the simplicity of this house is how the light and shadows reflect off its stark walls. Since the home has a low profile, the trees extend much higher than the home producing an almost abstract overshadow. It’s amazing how good a simple rooftop looks as an overall structure for a building.
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5 Comments
homesower on 12.22.2011 at 12:25 PM
No views? Are you kidding? Are the trees not beautiful? What he offers them instead is a view of white concrete. Even the windows at the base only offer a view of the ground. Had architecture degenerated so badly that we now laud this as worthy praise?
Leo Lei on 12.22.2011 at 12:43 PM
Thank you for your comment. As you had mentioned in your own blog, modernism is an embracing and experimentation of abstraction and surrealism. What you consider degenerative might be the architect’s resolution to expand beyond conventional norms.
shirley pinder on 12.23.2011 at 03:12 AM
I loved looking at it initially but then was overcome by a sense of claustrophbia when I saw the image of the walls narrowing to the trees.
I live surrounded by trees and love watching the wind blowing throught the leaves. It is not just about scenery but the view can also be about senastation movement,sound and colour.
Still impressed by the design as it is being inventive.
homesower on 12.23.2011 at 11:22 AM
Yes, modernism is about experimentation. But what is the criterion for success? Doesn’t experimentation imply that some are successful, and those successes should be repeated, or at least the lessons from those experiments should be repeated?
So, this was an experiment, but in my view an unsuccessful one, unless you like the incarcerated feeling. Modernism loves to experiment but then its practitioners get all prickly when people don’t fawn over there experiments. There apparently is no learning curve in modernism.
Here is one way to test its success. Will someone buy it, and will they be able to sell it in turn for amounts approaching market values for other houses. A house that no one wants to live in is not much of a house, experiment or otherwise.
Leo Lei on 12.23.2011 at 11:48 AM
I’m the marketing director for a furniture company, and I know exactly what you mean when you describe the dichotomy of design success and sales success. We have pieces here that have won awards many times over, yet are the worst sellers you can imagine, and vice versa. Some designers design for aesthetics, others for its marketability. Personally, I love minimalism, and I praise out-of-the-box, nonconforming, unconventional design.
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