This house is called the Yakisugi or “charred cedar” house. Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori is using a traditional Japanese technique of charring as a way to finish and preserve wood. See another charcoal house by Fujimori here. Fujimori’s buildings often use traditional materials in almost fantastical, quasi-folkloric ways. This house was built to resemble, at least in its interior, a cave dwelling found near Lascaux in France. All photos here are by Edmund Sumner accompanying an article by Yuki Sumner in the Telegraph:

“Fujimori wanted to wrap the exterior of his ‘cave’ with charred cedar boards, a traditional and highly durable Japanese cladding material. Normally, such boards come in lengths of less than 7ft – any longer and they tend to warp when heated. Undeterred, the architect persuaded his clients, plus eight friends, to spend a day with him in a field charring the timber using a technique that he had discovered. A day’s hard work produced 400 beautifully charred cedar boards, each more or less 25ft long, and, although they were slightly warped, the gaps were filled with thick plaster, which created the striking striped pattern of the exterior walls.”

Terunobu Fujimori has been called the world’s only “surreal architect.” This is obviously not true, but there is a fantastical quality about his work that isn’t typical among architects, even when they’re trying for the new, the strange or the sci-fi. Fujimori is interesting because his is a down-to-earth fantasy, using simple, elemental materials that highlight the relationship of architecture to the ground from which its materials come. He’s not a traditionalist even despite the fact that you feel you can see all of Japanese architectural history in his work, both high and low, from traditional peasant houses to folk tales to the fortresses in Ran or Rashomon. For more about him see also pushpull. Fujimori curated a celebrated exhibition in the Japanese pavilion at the 2006 Venice Biennale of Architecture that’s worth looking at here. Photos are from Flickr and designboom. Immediately above and below, Fujimori’s Coal House, sheathed in satiny black charred wood that is a traditional method of fiinishing and preserving wood but that also somehow suggests the fires that destroyed so many of Japan’s wooden castles and houses.

Above, Nemunoki Art Museum by Terunobu Fujimori and Yoshio Uchika. Below, his Leek House, with a lattice roof with chives growing from it.

The building below with the dead trunks growing through and the look of a medieval Japanese wooden fortress is the Akino Fuku Museum.

More information on Fujimori below.

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Minimalism and fantasy, together. The interior of this teahouse is simple and modern, while the fantastical exterior looks like something from a Hiyao Miyazaki film. The interior view of the sliding wooden doors or shutters is just beautiful. The building is a Japanese teahouse by Terunobu Fujimori, who represented Japan at the Venice Biennale, in Yamanashi Prefecture. The photographs are by Dana + Leroy. The hatch in the floor is the entrance.

Click below for more photos of the Tetsu Teahouse and the similar “Too High Teahouse.”

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