Once inside, the home envelops its residents—a married couple who visit several times a month each spring, summer and fall—in airy, if compact, spaces independent of structural framework and defined by native timber and glass. The flooring is of waxed birch; the walls and ceiling are covered in larch panelling, expertly carpentered to accentuate continuity between inside and outside. The main living and dining space faces a lightly framed, 6.6-metre glass wall that sheds light as it showcases the scenery of the natural, protected woodlands to the south. Sliding glass doors can be opened fully, extending the living space outdoors. Spare furnishings with crisp, modern lines accentuate the feeling of integration between inside and out.

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Indeed, transparency between the built environment and the outdoors is a recurring theme in Iida’s rich body of work, which spans everything from private residences to community centres, university buildings, factories, and a botanical park. It’s an approach that is consummately modern, yet also stems from the traditional design of space in Japan, where sliding partitions offer flexibility, natural breezes are drawn in for circulation, and wrap-around verandas provide an intermediary space linking outside and inside. Iida is a stickler for craftsmanship in wood and its contextually appropriate use; his portfolio at times reads like an advocacy piece for the material’s inherent beauty. His hybrid wood and steel design for the Kawakami Forest Club, a forestry cooperative and timber promotion centre also in Nagano Prefecture, received the Architectural Institute of Japan prize (architectural design division) in 1998.

Iida is especially proud of the design and finish of this home’s kitchen, bath, and restroom “core”—a component that floats, object-like, in the larger space. To offset the brassy tone of the larch walls and ceiling, he used highest-grade plywood panelling—painted white, varnished, buffed to a 30% gloss and seamlessly joined together—to soften the space. “With this finish, at certain times of day the wood grain actually resembles marble. I’ve used this technique before, but never to such great effect,” he asserts happily. The same material and finishing is employed in the nearby sofa, coffee table, and shoe closet.

It was Iida’s design of a university research facility—with frameless glass walls that reveal the surrounding greenery while inviting free observation of the activities within—that prompted the homeowner, a distinguished scholar, to commission the Karuizawa residence. “Apparently my client found the office he occupies in the university building to be very comfortable. When at home on weekends and holidays, he takes great pleasure in working at his desk. But he insisted that his study space not be enclosed or obstructed by walls.” That desire for openness dovetailed with Iida’s trademark emphasis on transparency between interior and exterior spaces.

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Karuizawa is much colder than its elevation of 1,000 metres suggests—the annual average temperature is just 7.8_ C. A basement is included in the plan of the house, effectively serving as an air chamber to insulate the ground floor from the region’s permafrost. A periodic flow heat exchange unit housed in this lower level warms both the flooring and spaces above. A wood-burning stove delivers heat through to the second level and provides a stylish accent to the main living space on the first level. A kerosene heater, tucked into its own smart alcove, provides auxiliary heat when necessary. Iida says that he has been urging his client to visit the home in winter. “Not only because Karuizawa is beautiful at that time of year, but because I’d like to know their impressions of how the home feels during that season as well.”

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Written by Susan Rogers Chiuba

Seeing the Forest, Saving the Trees

"Not a single tree on the property was touched in the building of this house—in fact, we planted more. I even took pains to protect the natural mosses on the site,” architect Yoshihiko Iida recalls of the holiday residence he completed for a client in March 2007. The home is in Karuizawa, a small resort town in Japan’s Nagano Prefecture, 170 kilometres northwest of Tokyo.

The alpine setting’s cool summer temperatures and abundance of larch, fir and birch trees have made it a popular weekend and holiday retreat for beleaguered urbanites and avid birdwatchers since the late nineteenth century. But Karuizawa’s present-day tale is an oft-lamented one, of unconscionable and mismanaged real estate development that has destroyed much of the very charm that lured people to its idyllic mountain setting in the first place.

“The Karuizawa of years past was a quiet, wooded place, with lush stretches of moss carpeting thick groves of lofty, truly gorgeous trees,” says Iida. “Weekend homes of modest proportions dotted the area, generously spaced apart from one another. But now, all of that has changed. They’re cutting down trees at an alarming rate.”

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Iida suggests that even the rash of development that spread during the heady real estate boom of Japan’s bubble economy in the eighties was relatively conscientious, compared to what’s happened in the past decade. “Back then, developers were still mindful of the area’s unique history, topographical context, and native flora. But in recent years, builders and buyers alike have paid little heed to such concerns. It’s a shame, because they’re carving away the very soul of the place.”

If the weekend getaway that Iida designed here for one of the country’s most prominent scientists suggests anything, it’s that we still can, and should, turn to nature to seek our best inspirations. The site is blessed with a thick grove of trees at its south end. Iida determined to make this the focal point of the home’s main living and study spaces.

Iida’s design vision begins with the approach to the building. From the access road at the north end of the site, one walks about 40 metres along a simple footpath made of weatherproofed boards of native Nagano larch. The boards are in fact recycled from the scaffolding footholds used in the home’s construction. The footpath serves the dual purpose of “resetting” the visitor‘s mind to the rustic environs, and protecting the property’s native mosses. “I want the occupants to be aware of their relationship to the nature that surrounds them. Vacation homes, especially, are governed by a more primitive relationship between their inhabitants and the outdoors,” he explains.

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At the structure’s east and west sides, five reinforced concrete walls, rhythmically broken by apertures, support the gable roof. The entrance—not readily perceivable as it is flush with the striking, five-metre high wall of solid larch panelling that forms the west faÁade—is reached by passing through a roofed corridor that’s exposed to the open air at patterned intervals by these independent, unadorned walls.

The structure of the residence itself is monolithic. But within the simplicity of its saddleback scheme, Iida has shifted the roof’s axis by extending it to cover the approach corridor. The resulting asymmetry adds a playful twist to the shape of the house and the spaces within.

wood forest

Prefabricated architectural concept by architect Emelie Holmberg. I photographed the first made situated in unspoiled woodlands on the island of Väddö, Sweden.

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It grew out of a realization of changing living and working patterns partly precipitated by the pandemic. Pre-Covid, Emelie had dreamt of a more flexible lifestyle facilitated by technology, allowing her to work remotely wherever she chose, so long as she had internet access.

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This partly sparked the idea for Gimme Shelter, which began life as a concept for her own self-build, low-cost home. The project comprises two structures. One measures 32 sq m and contains a living room, kitchen, and bathroom; the other occupies 10sq m and houses a bedroom.

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