Unknown hill

Although this is a hotel limited to one group per day, the building functions as a wedding hall on holidays and a photo studio on weekdays. The Kujukuri Coast presents a remarkable landscape of undulating grassy fields and knolls. Not wanting to harm this beautiful environment, I conceived the idea of scoring a notch in the ground, carefully lifting a corner of the green carpet, and using the gap below as space for architecture. The roof slab being continuous with the sloping ground, seismic forces exerted on the roof can be transferred to the ground, and hence, the space required few pillars. Visitors will enjoy broad vistas of ocean and hills, and with time, wild flowering plants growing in the yard and on, the roof adding richness to this scenery. The result is a building of open, magnanimous appearance, where to lie down on the roof means to lie down on the ground. Borders between architecture and landscape will dissolve, and a new relationship between nature and architecture will emerge.

©Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP

Completion
Unbuilt
Principal use
Hotel
Structure
Reinforced Concrete
Site area
3,354㎡
Total floor area
829㎡
Building site
Chiba
Structure design
ARUP JAPAN
Team
Yasuhiro Otani [former staff], Keisuke Minato [former staff]