Designed by Keiichi Hayashi Architect, “House on the Mountainside” in Hyogo, Japan, is an unassuming single-family home rising among the trees. Set on a steep slope, this modern mountainside house boasts a minimalist design that highlights simple architectural details – the cut-out windows, and floating see-through staircases which wind their way up through the home’s six floors. “Each floor is designed to be homogeneous with the rest of the structure. Only the position of the windows modifies the space,” according to principal architect Keiichi Hayashi. “The atmosphere in the house changes as you move from floor to floor, the experience being unique every time – owing to a changing surrounding environment.” Keiichi Hayashi Architect
via Architecture Page
photo credit: Masao Nishikawa
From the Editor: An interesting but rather simple architecture of this slope house has been under-represented by many, in our opinion … To clearly understand the design one need to see this home from many angles all at once. To achieve this, most if not all images must fit into the same screen, and that is what we’ve tried to do here – fit as many details into one screen as possible. The real architectural challenge here is … how do you fit 5 staircases in a narrow rectangular shape of a 6-story home and provide enough light on each floor and get enough useful living space on each floor? The answer is simple – the locations of the windows on each floor should be dictated by the specific purpose of that floor; the windows cannot be located uniformly throughout the house. In addition, the staircases are all made see-through to let more light in from the surrounding windows.
