Inverted house stands in a field outside Taiki, an agricultural community on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. A modest yet striking structure, it -pushes to the extreme the idea of living outside - cooking, sleeping, eating, even bathing,- as Danielle
Demetrious observes in her essay -Inside Outing-. Originating in an annual competition organised by the LIXIL JS Foundation, the project was realised by a group of students and teachers from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO), built under the supervision of Kengo Kuma & Associates and completed in 2016.
Organised around a concrete cross-wall, with all practical functions placed to its exterior, the house reshapes domestic life as a sequence of outdoor rooms that shift with the seasons. This inversion of convention lays bare the essentials of dwelling while inviting reflection on architecture-s place within it. As Ryue Nishizawa remarks: -It is an extraordinarily plain and simple human space, reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright-s Prairie-style houses in North America, an Inuit tent in the wilderness, or travellers gathered around a fire in old Western films. It is a house that conveys both the intimacy of human warmth and the expanse of nature, with its buoyant architectural elements offering protection amid vast, untamed surroundings.-
