Location: Tokyo, Japan

Design Team: and to Architects

Area: 321.90 m²

Year: 2025

Structural Design: Kenichi Inoue Structural Engineers

MEP Design: ZO Consulting Engineers

Construction: Sanryo Construction

Landscape: DAISHIZEN

Photography: Koji Fujii / TOREAL

Design Features: Glimpsing House stands on a north-facing slope within a dense Tokyo neighbourhood. Its clients are an American husband drawn to Japan by the elusive beauty of Noh, his Japanese wife and their two children. They wanted both the layered depth of Japanese space and an everyday proximity to nature. and to Architects therefore treats the building's lines and surfaces as sensors for light, shadow, air and movement rather than enclosing family life within a sealed object.

The plot sits about one metre above its neighbours and opens toward the northern sky through an adjoining garden. A U-shaped volume embraces this northern garden, while parts of the house are lifted so light and air can continue through it. The sheltered space beneath is named the Roji Room: both an outdoor room and a domestic stage connecting the main house, stone veranda and detached tea room. Four separate roof planes reduce shadow over the garden and admit seasonal sun through clerestories.

The first form of glimpsing is choreographed through movement. Beyond the entrance, plaster screens, turning stairs, stone floors and the garden alternately block and release the view. Ceiling heights shift dramatically from 2350 mm to 7050 mm, giving the route a cadence akin to jo-ha-kyu, the progression of Noh. Spatial depth is produced less by physical distance than by repeated moments of seeing, losing and rediscovering.

A second form of glimpsing emerges as materials register changing phenomena. Bamboo-board concrete and Yamato timber cladding score moving shadows; polished plaster receives faint reflections and exposed aggregate holds fragmented light. The stone veranda mirrors trees and sky, a woven bamboo wall disperses light from the northern garden, while the fireplace stone and fusuma paper amplify flame and afternoon glow. Texture becomes a form of physical friction through which time is made visible.

Across 321.90 m², changes in the surrounding terrain become an interior landscape of varied levels. Living and dining rooms, a second lounge, the main bedroom and a tea room reached only by ladder establish different distances from the garden. The house draws on the shifting expression of a Noh mask: material and angle allow the same rooms to change with weather, hour and season, restoring attention to subtle transitions often missed in the city.

Design Team: and to Architects was founded in Tokyo in 2019 by architect Kohei Taniguchi. Born in Shiga in 1985, Taniguchi graduated from the Department of Architecture at Kindai University in 2009 and later joined the Kimura-Matsukuma laboratory at Kyoto Institute of Technology as a research student. From 2010 to 2019 he worked at NAP Architects, eventually serving as design director across chapels, houses, commercial projects and hotels.

The practice now has a team of approximately ten and works across houses, villas, resort hotels and offices. Its central theme is architecture nurtured by place: identifying latent value and connecting people, region, nature and history. The name 'and to' combines a conjunction and a preposition, describing architecture as both a medium of connection and a way of giving direction to a project.

Recent recognition includes the Grand Prize at JID AWARD 2025 and a Gold Award at the 2025 Japan Space Design Awards, alongside selections by AACA, JIA and Modern Living. Glimpsing House continues the studio's attention to place, perception and construction, locating architectural value in a heightened awareness of environmental change rather than form alone.