Delighting in its worldly views while seemingly defying gravity, this project seems to channel the spirit of Pierre Koenig’s or John Lautner’s seminal domestic work completed half a century ago, half the world away, on the US west coast. And yet here we are in the mountainous terrain of Karuizawa, Japan, a favoured summer getaway for city-dwellers.

Designed as a weekend retreat, Passage House is more aptly named than externally perceived. Although the building appears to be a C-shape in tenuous communication with a steep slope, its plan is a continuous circulatory loop, obscured and secured within the earth. Young Tokyo-based TNA has cemented its reputation for inventive one-off residences whose simple names – Stage House, Plaster House, Ring House convey something of their architecture’s rich reduction.

La entrada Passage House se publicó primero en Global Spaces.