Location: Izumitottori, Hannan, Japan

Design Team: Horibe Associates

Site Area: 358.79 m²

Building Area: 160.31 m²

Gross Floor Area: 199.08 m²

Completion: July 2025

Structure: Reinforced-concrete and timber hybrid

Structural Design: Takahashi Shunya Structural Architecture Research Institute

Construction: Soken Co., Ltd.

Photography: Yunagi Miki

Design Features: private villa ten -KUMANO- occupies a hillside in Izumitottori, Hannan, with wooded slopes behind and Osaka Bay and the city's distant lights ahead. Designed for one private group at a time, the villa turns looking, cooking, bathing and lingering into a continuous spatial experience. Because existing houses interrupt the lower view, Horibe Associates works in section rather than trying to recover the landscape through plan alone, lifting the principal living level by roughly 3.5 metres.

A reinforced-concrete base forms the ground-level pilotis and accommodates parking, arrival, stairs and wet areas closely tied to the terrain. The lighter timber structure above contains the living and dining room, kitchen, bedrooms and balcony. The hybrid system aligns structure, moisture resistance, construction logic and view height within a single sectional idea. Arrival begins between concrete walls and columns; the view remains compressed until the stair reaches the upper floor and opens toward sea and sky.

The gabled roof responds to the surrounding mountains. Its ridge position, rising beams and deep eaves collectively turn the interior toward the horizon. Exposed timber rafters draw the living room, dining area, kitchen and balcony beneath one directional canopy. The eaves do not mark a hard end to the room. They pull the balcony, weather and changing light into daily life, giving the horizon a different height when standing, sitting or approaching the rail.

Subtle floor changes calibrate these viewing positions. Kitchen, dining, lounge and window edges are not forced onto a single level; each is tuned to the eye line of cooking, gathering, reclining or pausing. At the centre, a 1.5-metre-wide, 19-millimetre-thick iron teppanyaki plate gathers preparation, eating and conversation around one horizontal surface. It is both an instrument and the villa's social centre, allowing the landscape to enter the rhythm of shared life rather than remain a distant view.

The bathroom, outdoor bath, cold plunge and glass-walled hinoki sauna form a sequence along the outer edge, keeping sky, sea and mountain air present while bathing. After dark, firelight, the timber roof and the luminous line of Kansai Airport establish another scale of experience. The villa does not rely on opulent finishes to signal retreat. Its atmosphere comes from the precise orchestration of elevation, shelter, framed views and bodily position across the changing light and temperature of a full stay.

Design Team: Horibe Associates is an architectural practice based in Takatsuki, Osaka, with an additional office in Tokyo, led by Naoko Horibe and Keiichi Horibe. Born in Osaka in 1972, Naoko Horibe graduated from Kindai University's Department of Architecture in 1995 and gained experience with Akira Sakamoto, Yoshihisa Okazaki and K.Associates before establishing her own office in 2003. The practice was incorporated in 2012 and adopted the name Horibe Associates in 2017. Keiichi Horibe joined in 2008 following work in the construction industry.

The studio works across houses, offices, commercial interiors, inns and private villas. It considers the effect architecture will have on its occupants, townscape and environment over decades, treating neither function nor form as an endpoint. Ongoing dialogue with clients, structural engineers, contractors and craftspeople allows material, construction and landscape to emerge from the realities of use, producing spaces that are ordered, durable and quietly familiar.

At private villa ten -KUMANO-, that approach is evident in the precise division between reinforced concrete and timber and in a section shaped around eye level, cooking, bathing and the passage into night. The project received the Grand Prize at the 2026 Asia Design Prize and was named a winner in the 2026 DNA Paris Design Awards, recognising a design that connects its hillside conditions with the full arc of a guest's stay.