Florian Busch Architects

House in the Forest

House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects

HOUSE IN THE FOREST

Florian Busch Architects

ARCHITECT IN CHARGE
Florian Busch Architects 

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
OAK, Masato Araya, Takayuki Fujimoto

CONTRACTOR
Wakisaka Corporation

DESIGN TEAM
Florian Busch, Sachiko Miyazaki, Mayo Shigemura, Luca Marulli, Tenesha Caton, Max Duval

AREA
230 m²

YEAR
2020

LOCATION
Rankoshi, Japan

CATEGORY
Houses

Text description provided by architect.

This project begins with close to three hectares of barely touched forest.

House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects

Only a short distance from Niseko’s ski slopes, the silence here is the antithesis of the vacation bustle that has turned several of the renowned ski area’s towns into a haphazard sprawl of increasingly suburban dimensions.

SOLITUDE 

Enchanted by the beauty of the region but disturbed by this relentlessly encroaching pseudo-suburbia, the owners, a large family, are seeking escape in the forest’s solitude.

Consequentially, the brief is not for a house but for a time in and with the forest.

House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects

TREES 

The site is an almost perfect square with 160-meter-long edges, filled with tall pine trees.

As we approach, a mound prevents any views into the site: The only access, a small rural road running along the northern boundary, was lowered many years ago.

House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects

After we climb up this mound, we stand between the trees. A gentle slope leads down towards the south for about 100 meters before the top of a steep acclivity demarcates the site’s southern border. About halfway in, there’s a clearing at the site’s western boundary.

INSTINCT 

Moving between the trees evokes curiosity. We are probing the surroundings.

House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects

Every subtle movement changes the depth of our perception. The clearing that we have discovered is the site’s only place where the distance turns the trees into an abstract background.

Yet instead of placing the building in the middle of the clearing (which would result in 360 degrees of background), we keep meandering between the trees at the edge to the clearing, protected by the trees around us.

FOREST 

The building branches out horizontally. Moving through the house is moving through the forest.

House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects

As our views keep changing from far to near, the forest is both distant background and tactile environment.

The end of each branch is cut open. The closer we move to the extremes (the end of the branches), the more we are drawn into the forest.

While the protection of the inside separates us physically from the experience of the forest, the focus and scale of the windows to the forest intensify it. We are sitting in the forest.

House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects

In the house’s central spine, this focus of selection is replaced by a multi-faceted instantaneity. As a multitude of views of the forest around us are filling the space, the original experience inside the forest is always present.

The House in the Forest is not about a fixed form but an ever-changing dialogue with the forest.

House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects

DIALOGUE 

The eventually built is merely the result of a process of probing and responding to the surroundings to create a place where the family can be both together and by themselves, where they can become part of the forest.


House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects
House in the Forest
Courtesy of Florian Bush Architects


House in the Forest
Plan
House in the Forest
Plan


House in the Forest
Branch Views
House in the Forest
Elevations


House in the Forest
Sections

Florian Busch Architects
T +81 3 6277 5190 F +81 3 62775199
Florian Busch Architects
Sakuragaoka-Cho 14-10-312, Shibuya-Ku, Tokyo, 150-0031, Japan