Project Name: HOUSE F

Location: Ootakanomori, Nagareyama City, Chiba, Japan

Design Team: Kamakura Studio  

Total Floor Area: 168.79 m²

Completion: January 2022

Photography: TOREAL Koji Fujii, Shinkenchiku-sha

Design Features:

Project - Kamakura Studio's HOUSE F is a 168.79-square-metre residential and office masterpiece that embodies the sophisticated balance between community-engaged architectural design and seamless integration with daily life. The project is situated in an emerging neighborhood where 75% of residents have moved in within the past decade, creating an extraordinary social function where architecture serves as both community catalyst and neighborhood connector.

The building's most revolutionary design feature lies in its multifunctional ground-floor spatial configuration: an open office space that simultaneously functions as a semi-public zone where neighbors can naturally gather. This innovative spatial strategy not only allowed the architects to extend private life toward the community, but also created a flexibly transforming multifunctional venue—becoming a small café through sharing extra coffee, serving as a cultural exchange center through community library functions, and hosting film screenings with projection equipment. The building literally makes space for community interaction to unfold at its core.

Kamakura Studio's design strategy revolves around the central balance between blurred architectural boundaries and spatial continuity. Continuous materials, design elements, and floor levels blur traditional distinctions between interior and exterior, creating a spatial experience of "sharing something together, whether inside or outside the house." Separated roofs combined with a three-dimensional façade greening system visually integrate with the surrounding environment, responding to the local plant-sharing network that has developed across dozens of households.

The principal façades operate as community interfaces, displaying the building's public functions to the street while maintaining residential privacy. Interior spaces prioritize functional flexibility and adaptability, with room configurations designed for flexible use and adaptation to evolving community activity needs. From coffee sharing and book exchanges to workshops, lectures, and film screenings, the architecture serves diverse community functional requirements.

Three-dimensional greening systems, natural ventilation design, and open-plan spatial layouts significantly enhance the building's environmental adaptability. Exterior materials capable of withstanding Japanese climatic conditions further increase the building's durability and longevity. Terraces and interior spaces that alternate throughout both plan and section create rich spatial experiences reminiscent of living among forest trees.

HOUSE F represents a paradigm of community-responsive residential architecture: an architectural language that prioritizes social connection, neighborhood interaction, and architecture as community infrastructure in perfect symbiosis between private residence and public function.

Design Team - Kamakura Studio Co., Ltd. is a full-service, design-forward practice focused on creating architecture that fosters community connections and cultivates deep relationships between residents and the places they inhabit. Led by principal architects Keisuke Fukui and Keisuke Morikawa in collaborative leadership, the firm's focus on place-making and community building embodies forward-thinking approaches within contemporary Japanese architectural practice.

Keisuke Fukui brings solid architectural educational foundation, graduating from Nihon University College of Science and Technology Department of Architecture in 2007, and completing graduate studies at Y-GSA (Yokohama National University Graduate School) in 2010. He gained practical experience at NAP Architectural Design Office, established his individual practice in 2012, and co-founded Kamakura Studio with Keisuke Morikawa in 2016. Keisuke Morikawa also graduated from Nihon University College of Science and Technology Department of Architecture, later completing his master's degree at Tokyo Metropolitan University, and worked at Kume Sekkei and Atsushi Kitagawara Architects, bringing rich design experience to the firm.

The firm's philosophical foundation centers on the belief that architecture should facilitate dialogue within communities, enabling residents to become "stakeholders" in neighborhood development rather than "bystanders." This ethos drives their distinctive "Life Extension" methodology—a comprehensive design process that opens daily life functions to the community, beginning with profound understanding of what each community wants to become, exploring demographic structures, social needs, cultural contexts, and future development potential.

Kamakura Studio's multidisciplinary approach recognizes that residential architecture exists at the intersection of private and public, individual and collective, weaving creative spatial strategies with rigorous functional analysis to deliver thoughtful, inspiring, sustainable, and authentic community architecture. Since its establishment, the firm has received multiple domestic and international awards including Good Design Award 2022, IF Design Award, and Chiba Prefecture Architectural Culture Award, demonstrating professional standards and innovative capabilities in community-responsive architectural design.