Chigasaki, Japan

When Japanese architect Naoki Kato designed this new house in Chigasaki, he stood at the site and considered the neighborhood’s mixed-use area with its houses, rental apartments, company buildings, factories, container storage areas.

He also realized the house would be isolated in that landscape.

At that point, he didn’t want to actively open the house to the surroundings, nor did the client want that exposure, but instead a developed sense of total protected isolation and privacy.

As a result, the design theme would be to “closed the outside from the inside and give the interior space a sense of expanse.”

From there he developed House-I.

Project: N.A.O House-I
Designers: NAO
Client: Private
Photographers: Shinichi Hanaoka