Location: Kamakura, Japan

Design Team: Teitakusubako / Naoki Hayasaka + Yuta Onoda

Area: 106.01 m²

Year: 2025

Photography: Norihito Yamauchi + Shota Nakayama

Design Features: The Fashion Designer's House in Kamakura was designed by Naoki Hayasaka and Yuta Onoda of Teitakusubako for a couple working in avant-garde fashion. Their creative practice values the operations of zurasu, hazusu and kuzusu—shifting, detaching and dismantling established forms. Rather than treating these words as imagery, the architects extended them into plan, section, material ordering and on-site junctions.

Atelier, storage, living, kitchen and sleeping zones are organised as an interconnected one-room system. The entrance opens toward the fashion studio on the ground floor; living and kitchen occupy the upper level; and a half-level is threaded through the stair and changing floor heights. Material-clad cores, steps, low walls and furniture stitch uses together without relying on complete partitions, making domestic space feel like a garment whose pattern remains adjustable.

The sectional strategy is especially explicit. The stair is not merely vertical circulation but a sequence of horizontal plates pulled apart, turned and passed through rooms. Work below, living above and intermediate occupation remain visually connected. On the street elevation, a white solid base frames a more transparent upper storey, while entrance, balcony and large windows shift subtly rather than obeying a single symmetrical axis.

The material method responds to both cost and concept. Construction normally orders roughly ten per cent extra to absorb waste, but this house used calculated quantities without the customary allowance. Small shortages or surpluses were accepted and resolved spontaneously at internal and external corners, floor changes and furniture junctions. Misalignment becomes a trace of production rather than an applied motif, while unnecessary waste is reduced.

Grey-green floors, white walls, timber joinery and a metal stair create a restrained palette. Porcelain tile, diatomaceous-earth finish, wood and resin cement retain distinct tactile qualities, meeting in deliberately imperfect alignments around thresholds, skirtings and steps. Broad glazing brings neighbourhood trees, cherry blossom and distant hills into the rooms, balancing the precision of the atelier with the looseness of dwelling.

The house is compelling not because of a singular expressive object, but because architectural rules are allowed to be recut during execution. Limited material, changing levels and functional cores constrain one another to form a home that is precise yet open to contingency. Fashion's sensitivity to bodies, seams and allowance is translated into space that can be walked through, touched and continually altered by life.

Design Team: Teitakusubako began its Kamakura-based practice under Naoki Hayasaka in September 2022, focusing on houses and hospitality projects across Kamakura, Zushi and Hayama. Hayasaka spent about ten years as a project leader in Japanese and international studios, including three years in Paris and experience at Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects. The practice connects European craft culture with local climate, builders and everyday life in the Shonan region.

The house was designed by Naoki Hayasaka and Yuta Onoda, with structural engineering by Hiraiwa Structural Engineers and construction by Hayama Komuten. Garden Green Residence, co-designed by the practice, was selected for the 2024 Modern Living Award Best 6, reflecting an ongoing approach grounded in regional context, crafted detail and quiet spatial order.