Project Name: House for Cultivation

Location: Saitama Prefecture, Japan

Design Team: nevertheless / Yusuke Sagawa Architects

Total Floor Area: 103.70 m²

Completion: February 2025

Photography: Yosuke Harada

Design Features: House for Cultivation, designed by nevertheless / Yusuke Sagawa Architects, stands as a masterful expression of agricultural wisdom integration with residential space and innovative migratory living practice nestled within a site adjacent to farmland in Saitama Prefecture. This 103.70-square-meter private residence exemplifies the perfect balance between distinctive spatial depth layering and geometric intervention strategy, redefining the dynamic equilibrium between evolving family relationships and spatial adaptability.

The project's most compelling design achievement lies in its intelligent agricultural analogy design strategy. The architect's prolonged working experience adjacent to farmland led to observation of continuous cropping disorder phenomenon, where repeated planting of the same crop causes soil nutrient imbalance and growth impediment. This agricultural principle inspired the residence's core spatial concept. Sagawa believes human habitation and crop cultivation share the same essence, where uniform spaces used over extended periods lead to life imbalance. Therefore, this residence does not employ planar repetition of same-sized individual rooms, but rather creates spatial layers with depth, encouraging residents to migrate between different dwelling zones as time progresses and family relationships transform. This strategic design not only optimized spatial utilization but also closely linked physical restrictions with spiritual needs, functional layout, and emotional experience.

The architectural narrative unfolds through sophisticated spatial sequence, demonstrating remarkable design choreography. The residence employs straightforward timber post and beam framework, while implementing several geometric interventions in plan and section. The roof features arc-shaped cutouts, creating dynamic skyline contours. These intervention methods, while establishing connections with strong regional contexts such as farmland and earthen floor, employ powerfully geometric forms to sever certain predetermined relationships. The architect intends that collision between essential activities inherent in traditional spatial creation such as large roofs and earthen floors, and heterogeneous geometric shape interventions, generates more fundamental modes of existence beyond dimensions of family and time.

The project's defining architectural element is the innovative spatial depth layering system, demonstrating remarkable spatial organization intelligence. The residence creates place-making where parts and whole resonate through spatial sequence in the depth direction rather than planar repetition. Small dwelling spaces are configured according to temporal changes in family relationships, allowing residents to migrate between different zones like crop rotation, maintaining dynamic life balance. The timber post and beam construction system supports this flexible layout, exposing the raw beauty of materials, achieving unity of spatial honesty and adaptability.

The interior treatment demonstrates the refinement of exceptional craftsmanship. Finishing materials primarily employ lauan plywood, supplemented by scattered arrangement of white, beige, and pink tones. These colors, selected through acrylic paint mixing, are freely disposed by parts without hierarchical order according to rooms. Consequently, as light flickers, contrasts emerge or fade and blend, generating subtle variations within space. The differentiated treatment of material selection serves not only as an aesthetic pursuit strategy but becomes an important element of spatial narrative, allowing the entire residence to present clearly layered textural and tactile dialogue.

The design achieves delicate balance between urban residential areas and natural rhythms by having architecture and farmland landscape embrace rather than merely coexist. Window sills, coping, and kitchen countertop thicknesses are unified at 60 millimeters, endowing hand-touched parts with material texture and physical mass. Windows project 40 millimeters outward with 5.5-millimeter lauan plywood on three sides excluding sills, visually dissolving standard window frames and achieving landscape framing effects. The project proves that thoughtful design can create timeless dwellings coexisting with natural rhythms within compact site environments through strategic spatial utilization and innovative structural application, while responding to continuous evolution of family relationships.

Design Team: nevertheless / Yusuke Sagawa Architects, established in 2017 by Yusuke Sagawa, is a Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture-based practice dedicated to architectural design, interior design, furniture design, and graphic design that balances site observation inspiration with spatial construction surfaces. Principal architect Yusuke Sagawa, operating under the philosophy of deep contextual interpretation, brings distinguished educational background and practical experience committed to synthesizing traditional spatial principles with contemporary design methodologies.

Prior to founding his own practice, Sagawa honed his expertise through seven years of architectural practice at O.F.D.A.associates, developing a design philosophy rooted in site observation, cultural continuity, and spatial innovation that embodies a contemporary interpretation of traditional spatial creation. The firm's leadership team specializes in comprehensive architectural services including architectural design, interior design, furniture design, and graphic design, continuously exploring relevant roles for architecture by challenging the status quo. Sagawa simultaneously serves as part-time lecturer in the Department of Architecture at Nippon Institute of Technology, maintaining active dialogue between practice and pedagogy.

The practice has garnered significant recognition within the Japanese architectural community, earning the 2015 Fujiyoshida City Design Competition First Prize in renovation category, inclusion in the Architectural Institute of Japan's Selected Architectural Designs 2017, the 2020 Kumamoto Artpolis Public Toilet Competition Honorable Mention, and the 2022 10th Saitama Architectural Award for Excellence. Multiple firm projects have received professional media attention and coverage, demonstrating consistent exploration in spatial innovation and cultural interpretation.

nevertheless / Yusuke Sagawa Architects, as a full-service architectural practice, demonstrates proficiency across diverse typologies, encompassing residential architecture, interior design, furniture design, graphic design planning, planning and design of various innovative renovation projects, cultural integration, and spatial product design. Through a diverse portfolio spanning from private residences to public facilities, the firm has established new paradigms in contemporary Japanese architecture, demonstrating consistent commitment to creating genuinely humanized environments. For the practice, spatial depth gives a sense of layering and dimensionality, countering the homogenization of planar repetition. The practice incorporates depth to create migratory dwellings from site to architecture, evoking senses of time and relationship, guiding residents through space with gradual and organic transitions. Its award-winning projects confirm the firm's exceptional standing in contemporary Japanese architectural practice. The practice's designs are firmly grounded and speak the language of site context, yet display subtle and unexpected individuality. With its design philosophy, the practice strikes a balance between thought-provoking spatial narrative and smart functionality to create possibilities for fundamental existence.