Project Name: House Y

Location: Chiba, Japan

Design Team: Mikazuki Architects

Lead Architects: Takashi Yamaguchi, Ryota Kuboki, Ryozo Arai

Structural Engineer: Inoue Kenichi Structural Design Office

Contractor: Tanzawa Koumuten Co., Ltd.

Total Floor Area: 95.55 m²

Completion: September 2025

Photography: Yasuhiro Takagi

Design Features: House Y, designed by Takashi Yamaguchi of Mikazuki Architects, is a private residence for the architect himself, situated in a quiet suburban neighbourhood in Chiba, Japan. Completed in September 2025, the project emerges from a deeply personal investigation into what it means to live richly in an environment that is, at first glance, unremarkable.

The surrounding streetscape is a patchwork of homes, greenways, farmland, woodland, parks, and gardens — an apparently unbalanced mix of the natural and the man-made. Rather than treating this condition as a limitation, Yamaguchi found within it an opportunity. He began collecting what he describes as "fragments of scenery" scattered throughout the neighbourhood, and translated these fragments into form, space, material, and detail across the architecture of the house.

The result is a generous, open-plan single room organised across two levels, animated by two double-height voids. A central passage runs through the house like a path cutting from a greenway through farmland into a grove of trees — a spatial gesture that roots the interior firmly in its suburban context. This circulation spine connects the family's various living areas three-dimensionally, allowing the shifting qualities of light, air, and landscape to move freely through the home.

What distinguishes House Y is the layered quality of its atmosphere. The exterior environment does not simply stop at the threshold; it enters the house and circulates through it, weaving together with the material traces of the surrounding landscape to create an interior that feels simultaneously intimate and open to the city beyond. Yamaguchi's design demonstrates that the most compelling residential architecture need not rely on a dramatic site or an exceptional context — it can be found in the patient, attentive reading of the ordinary.

Design Team: Mikazuki Architects is a licensed architectural practice based in Narashino, Chiba, Japan, established in 2022 under its current identity following the reestablishment of principal Ryota Kuboki's earlier practice, Kuboki Kenchiku, founded in 2020. The firm is led by three principals, each holding the Japanese first-class architect licence: Ryota Kuboki, Takashi Yamaguchi, and Ryozo Arai.

The three principals bring complementary professional trajectories to the practice. Kuboki trained extensively in large-scale residential development at Daiwa House Industry before founding his own atelier. Yamaguchi developed his design sensibility at NAP Architectural Design Office, one of Japan's leading contemporary practices, before establishing his own studio in 2015 and joining Mikazuki Architects at its founding. Arai refined his expertise in residential and civic architecture through tenures at the offices of Akihisa Hirata and Onuma Architects.

The firm's scope encompasses new residential and mixed-use architecture, collective housing, commercial interiors, renovation and fit-out, furniture and product design, and land-use consultation. Drawing on a shared academic foundation at Nihon University's Department of Architecture and diverse subsequent professional experience, Mikazuki Architects pursues design rooted in close contextual observation — translating the qualities of everyday environments into spatial experiences of precision and atmosphere.