Shore house | Mount Fuji Architects Studio

Near the root of Manazuru Peninsula, on a hilly topography that descends toward the south, the site is located where the hill once loosens its inclination like a shoulder. Beyond a growth of broadleaf trees enclosing the nearby site, the Pacific Ocean largely and quietly extends, The client's wish was a guesthouse for the family and their friends, who spend their weekends.
For building architecture in such a rich natural setting, it seemed inappropriate to introduce an urban-typed, earnest and self-contained order. What became useful as a reference was beachcombing way of thinking, which is the client's hobby. Various objects that were washed ashore are assembled in three-dimension as if adjusting the materials in a way they hope to be, reading their appeals and the voices. In this occasion, an order is not an absolute ruler, but is a dynamic and supple existence that transforms itself in succession by considering a relationship between materials and a way of “an open order”.
Specifically a set of column and beam structure made of 38 mm-thick LVL aligned in 830 mm span is made into an “L shaped wall and roof” unit that are composed by receiving them with a natural wooden beam and column cut off the both sides. The unit was prepared in three different scales: large, middle and small, and they were arranged by maintaining in part a relationship that each clashes other, so that they will create a terrace and corners in different locations. The position and angles were not determined conceptually by a strict geometry, but rather by an adjacent milieu such as natural landscape's contour lines, a sight to the sea, existing trees and their branches, or materials' voices such as a volumetric sense of materials, surfaces and densities, and various tangible measure such as ratio of a fluidity and a solidity of space. They are attuned and determined to be mutually harmonious.
There is no smart stiffness where a strict direction solemnly dominates in the completed living setting, but there is a tight “harmony” that looks like all the elements that exist are in a series of “dialogue relationship”. The dialogue relationship takes in nearby natural milieu such as sea, forest and geography and expands endlessly, because the order used in architecture is open itself. The experience to place us in the “benevolent harmony” that is directly linked to the world seemed to be our design purpose.

Masahiro Harada