The Clay Domes Anchoring This Japanese Home Are Basically a Life-Size Ceramics Project

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Project Details:

Location: Kanagawa, Japan

Architect: AATISMO / @aatismo

Footprint: 1,420 square feet

Builder: Yukari Kensetsu

Structural Engineer: Tectonica

Lighting Design: Daisuki Light

Table Production: Sasaki Research Institute

Plastering: Imajo Sakan

Photographer: Shinya Sato / @shinyasato_hello

From the Architect: "Haniyasu House is a two-family residence designed for our parents, who are ceramic artists, and for ourselves as architects. About 15 years ago, our parents moved to Kamakura in search of an environment where they could fully devote themselves to working with clay. The house is located at the edge of a valley called Yato, surrounded by steep cliffs into which horizontal cave tombs known as yagura are carved—an environment where the presence of the earth is strongly felt. In order to confront and respond to the way this land exists, we took earth, humanity ’s most ancient material, as our central theme and brought the architecture into being.

"As a place suited to all of us, whose lives revolve around making, we envisioned a primordial dwelling—one from a time when living and creating were not yet separated. We stripped away the walls and ceiling of the existing house to form a single large space connected to its surroundings, and added new rooms at its four corners, their forms evoking masses of earth emerging from the ground. Within the added volumes, each person works and sleeps in a cave-like, enclosed space, while gathering in a central, plaza-like area to converse and share meals. We imagined a way of life akin to that of a small settlement.

"The name Haniyasu House derives from a deity in Japanese mythology who governs earth, soil, and pottery; hani is an archaic Japanese word meaning clay. As if offered to this deity, the house seeks to unite with the land through earth as a medium, while transcending the frameworks of land, architecture, and pottery—becoming a vessel in which living and creating can remain inseparable.

"We crushed clay-rich soil from the land, fired it in my father’s kiln, applied glazes, and scorched it with burners—repeating numerous experiments in an attempt to use the colors of the earth itself as a material. In the final process, we bisque-fired discarded clay generated through my father’s making process, layered it over the soil from the site, and then poured a plaster mixed with iron and copper powder—byproducts from a metal workshop—over the exterior walls of the extensions in multiple layers, like glaze, allowing oxidation to produce color through rust."