Project Name: Kamimeguro House

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Design Team: Yuki Morita Architects

Total Floor Area: 127.79 m²

Completion: 2025

Photography: Kimihiro Nishikawa

Design Features:

Project - Kamimeguro House, designed by Yuki Morita Architects, stands as a refined response to unique site conditions and an expression of distinctive architectural language, located in Meguro, Tokyo. This two-storey wooden residence sits adjacent to a greenway formed from a covered river, creating a serene dwelling away from urban bustle and establishing a delicate balance between city and nature through innovative spatial strategies.

The project's most compelling design achievement lies in its innovative "wall column colonnade" design concept. The building employs a series of wall columns perpendicular to the greenway, creating a colonnade-like spatial quality. This rhythmic structural element simultaneously achieves multiple functions, framing views toward the verdant greenway, providing necessary privacy from passing pedestrians, and becoming the structural framework for large glazed openings using heat-resistant reinforced glass. The wall columns are positioned at half-ken intervals of approximately 910mm, establishing a measured cadence that shapes both the building's exterior expression and interior spatial experience. This design ensures visual permeability along the wall columns while effectively blocking diagonal sightlines, creating a spatial atmosphere where protection and openness coexist.

The architectural narrative unfolds through sophisticated spatial hierarchy, responding to the site's complex topography and environmental conditions. The site descends approximately one meter from the street toward the greenway, situated in a valley between plateaus to the north and south. The architect designed a staggered floor plan following the irregular site boundaries, this zigzagging configuration maximizes diagonal sightlines and fully exploits the inherent spatial potential of the site's form. In the sectional design, two roofs respond to the terrain and direct views toward the greenery below, low eaves block sightlines from neighboring structures to the north while maintaining an intimate scale, achieving comfortable spatial experience within strict setback regulations.

Material selection demonstrates contemporary design refinement and pragmatic response to site conditions. Anticipating potential urban flooding in the area, the residence employs an elevated foundation design, with concrete volumes enclosing interior spaces to provide both structural security and psychological comfort. The combination of wooden structure system and concrete foundation ensures the building's structural integrity and long-term durability while maintaining a warm and inviting residential atmosphere.

The facade treatment demonstrates intimate relationship between structure and environmental space. The corridor-like space created by the wall columns becomes a contemporary reinterpretation of an architectural element historically used to separate and connect different realms, existing here as a threshold space where street, greenway, and residence meet. This transitional space creates the unique experience the client describes as a slower passage of time. The deep openings framed by the wall columns sharpen awareness of the contrasts between interior stillness and exterior movement, clearly capturing the swaying trees of the greenway and pedestrian dynamics in the wind, while interior quietness is enhanced through this contrast, creating a primordial sensation reminiscent of observing the outside world from within a cave, opening consciousness to the present moment.

The project's defining feature is its orchestrated site response strategy and spatial experiential value. Kamimeguro House is located at the end of a cul-de-sac with no vehicular traffic nearby, forming a tranquil environment away from urban noise. However, the greenway experiences frequent pedestrian activity at close proximity, requiring establishment of an appropriate interior-exterior relationship rather than simple openness. The architect precisely responds to this contradictory demand through the corridor-like space created by the staggered colonnade. This is architecture designed to enhance everyday living quality, proving that in dense urban environments, architecture can create rich spatial experiences and emotional resonance through thoughtful design. The bond between architecture and city seamlessly integrates in a refined and balanced dialogue, creating meaningful spaces for living and perceiving the present moment. The former river has transformed into a greenway where people pass, and this residence will also be enveloped in greenery as garden trees grow, amid these changes the architecture consistently directs human sensation toward the "now."

Design Team - Yuki Morita Architects, founded in 2015 by architect Yuki Morita, is a Tokyo-based design practice dedicated to creating spaces that profoundly move people. Today, under the leadership of founder and principal architect Yuki Morita, the firm maintains a focused and refined team structure, operating from its studio in Chofu, Tokyo.

Under Yuki Morita's creative direction, the Kamimeguro House project embodies the firm's core design principles and methodology. Morita is a licensed first-class architect and representative director who studied at the Faculty of Architecture, Technical University of Lisbon, bringing international academic experience, and received professional training at established Japanese practices including Hiroji Ogawa Architects and Work Visions. He currently serves as part-time lecturer at Aichi Sangyo University, Chiba University, and Kyoritsu Women's Junior College, contributing to architectural education while maintaining an active design practice.

The firm's design philosophy centers on creating "spaces that resonate with the human spirit," believing that exceptional spaces possess the power to move people, encompassing everything from immediate vivid sensations to influences that quietly permeate over extended time. Their design methodology emphasizes avoiding adherence to specific styles, allowing site conditions and client values to guide design direction, spanning from conceptual planning and basic design to material selection, detailing, furniture and lighting design, carefully addressing each project across scales. The practice pursues maximally revealing the inherent qualities sites originally possess, creating "one and only" irreplaceable spaces for users, aiming in this contemporary era of information overflow and shifting trends to create architecture that withstands the test of time and is cherished across generations.

Notable achievements include residential projects such as Komoro House, Inagi House, Kasuga House, and Kokubunji House, with works gaining extensive recognition in major architectural publications including Shinkenchiku Jutakutokushu, Jutaku Kenchiku, Casa Brutus, I'm home, Modern Living, and Detail. The firm's work has also received in-depth coverage and analysis on professional media platforms including architecturephoto and TECTURE MAG.

Yuki Morita Architects has established a distinctive design position in contemporary Japanese architecture through a diverse portfolio spanning residential buildings, collective housing, commercial facilities, and various public facilities, demonstrating a design approach characterized by deep understanding of site characteristics, continuous pursuit of spatial quality, and steadfast commitment to enduring value.