Sometimes when I’ve seen too many chichi, precious, citified and finishy houses, too much shiny design, and everything around me just starts to look too estranged from the things it was made from, I want to see pictures of handbuilt houses. People can dismiss these as “hippie houses,” but the evident Japanese, Scandinavian and other architectural influences actually ally these buildings within a certain strand of modernism. In particular there’s plenty of crossover between westcoast modernism and the handbuilt house. This bedroom’s use of textiles, the wool blanket on the patterned bedspread, the coarse but pleasing textures, the architecturally bold beams and trusses, the skylight and the generally abundant light, the sense that the trees outside are part of the room – maybe it’s because my favourite aunt lived in a house like this when I was growing up, but to me this room is beautiful. Maybe not to everyone, but for me, well, you can almost smell the perfume of the wood in this room. This photo is from a great book from 1972 titled Handmade Houses. There are also two relatively new books on handbuilt houses by Lloyd Kahn, who has probably  documented more of these Pacific coast houses than anyone and used to be the shelter editor for the Whole Earth Catalog. I’ll periodically feature examples of what I think are the most interesting of these buildings.

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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This is one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen. It is the “Final Wooden House” by Sou Fujimoto, 2008, in Kamamura village in the south of Kyushu. It has just won Best Private Home award in the Wallpaper Design Awards 2009 and is probably on every design blog this week.More photos below, from Flickr, DesignBoom and ArchDaily. Fujimoto’s idea was to build a small, primitive bunglow that would highlight the versatility of lumber, both as structural material and as interior design. All of the uses of wood in traditional architecture are here. The house is entirely constructed of 14″ square cedar lumber with the exception of the angled windows. Many people have said it looks like Jenga and even the interior feels like a puzzle, full of interesting wooden nooks and solids that can be used in a variety of ways, as seating, tables, or a bed. Click below for Sou Fujimoto’s own comments on the house.

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