{"id":500520,"date":"2026-05-24T14:13:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T14:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/500520\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T14:13:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T14:13:23","slug":"kumaelsa-arranges-apartments-around-translucent-huts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/500520\/","title":{"rendered":"Kuma&Elsa arranges apartments around translucent “huts”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Architecture studio Kuma&Elsa has renovated<\/a> the top two floors of an apartment<\/a> block in Japan<\/a>, creating enclosures that aim to re-create the spatial conditions of a traditional Japanese engawa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Located in Japan’s Fukuoka prefecture, Nakano House was completed for a client who wanted to re-create the feeling of her traditional childhood home 15-metres above ground on the top two floors of a concrete apartment block.<\/p>\n

\"InteriorKuma&Elsa renovated the top two floors of an apartment block in Japan<\/p>\n

To achieve this, Kuma&Elsa<\/a> inserted a central hut on each floor, creating a space around its perimeter that opens onto balconies. This house-in-a-house approach replicated the feel of a traditional Japanese veranda space known as an engawa.<\/p>\n

“The project involves the design of two apartments: one for the client on the sixth floor and one for the family of one of her sons on the seventh floor,” founders Shohei Kuma and Elsa Escobedo told Dezeen.<\/p>\n

\"HomeCentral “huts” were inserted on each floor<\/p>\n

“In both cases, we introduced a ‘hut’ at the centre of each floor,” they continued. ‘Around these volumes, we defined an engawa as a residual \u2013 negative \u2013 space.”<\/p>\n

“However, the boundaries of the huts are not fixed; they can extend and connect different areas, forming a continuous living environment across each floor,” they added.<\/p>\n

\"LivingThey were constructed using simple steel frames<\/p>\n

The hut in the centre of each floor was constructed using a simple steel frame, which was fixed to the apartment block’s concrete floor plates and braced to the ceiling with steel cables.<\/p>\n

Translucent, sliding screens of plastic framed in timber allow the bedrooms and living spaces inside to be opened-up to the surrounding area, where the bathrooms, kitchen and dining spaces are located.<\/p>\n

The wooden flooring of the hut interiors extends out to form a perimeter mimicking a traditional timber engawa, with a zigzagging edge where it meets the surrounding concrete floor.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"House<\/p>\n

HYG Architects designs Japanese home as “spatial continuum” of its surroundings\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Timber shutters and curtains screen the surrounding windows, which incorporate sliding glass doors to access balconies on the building’s southern side.<\/p>\n

Atop the huts, their fire-resistant plasterboard roofs have been left purposefully unfinished, an approach that was also used for the rough plastered walls of the bathroom.<\/p>\n

\"KitchenThe wooden flooring features a zig-zagging edge<\/p>\n

“The idea of leaving certain elements deliberately unfinished, allowing them to evolve over time, emerged through dialogue with the client and her family,” Kuma and Escobedo told Dezeen.<\/p>\n

“As the site is a recent apartment rather than an older building, it lacks pre-existing elements or surfaces marked by age and patina,” they continued. “This sense of ‘incompleteness’ therefore introduces a temporal dimension into the project.”<\/p>\n

\"NakanoRough plastered walls decorate the bathroom<\/p>\n

Other homes in Japan recently featured on Dezeen include House in Takahatayama by HYG Architects,<\/a> which features stepped floors and curved ceilings designed to mimic the undulating landscape of the surrounding neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

The photography is by Shohei Kuma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Architecture studio Kuma&Elsa has renovated the top two floors of an apartment block in Japan, creating enclosures that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[18974,365,362,363,364,366,18,117,19,17,386,136667,2919,10357,10358,153966,17120],"class_list":["post-500520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-apartments","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-japan","tag-japanese-houses","tag-renovations","tag-sectionall","tag-sectionarchitecture","tag-sectionexclusives","tag-sectionhighlights"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116629969925208662","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}