Enter-Archi shapes broken-pitch roof for House in Yakami

A broken-pitch roof with a two-in-ten upper slope keeps the House in Yakami low enough to frame views of the surrounding mountains while shedding heavy snowfall. Japanese studio Enter-Archi designed the one-storey, timber-framed home in Yakami, a rural town in Japan's Shimane Prefecture.

The studio organised the house as three connected volumes with courtyards in between. A covered parking space occupies the front volume. The middle volume contains an open-plan living, kitchen and dining room, and the rear volume holds three bedrooms.

Enter-Archi built the house from a traditional Japanese post-and-beam timber system, leaving columns, beams and rafters exposed.

The roof's double angle does two jobs at once. The gentler upper pitch keeps the overall height low, preserving sightlines from the interior. The steeper lower pitch echoes the tiled roofs of neighbouring buildings and helps prevent snow from piling up.

"By reducing the upper portion to a two-in-ten pitch and keeping the overall height low, views from the interior are drawn beyond the building towards the sky and mountains," Enter-Archi founder Yoshikatsu Iriguchi told Dezeen.

"In the living, dining and kitchen space, the ceiling height was also carefully adjusted to create a sense of bodily scale while maintaining the openness of the space," he added.

Courtyards flank the central living space. Enter-Archi designed the open layout and adjacent outdoor rooms to give residents room to relax with family and friends. Iriguchi also wanted the low-lying house to nestle into the rural landscape.

"Fields and mountain ranges extend to the east and west, while houses with traditional Sekishu-tile roofs line the north and south," said Iriguchi. "Mist settles over the area in the mornings and evenings, and in winter the landscape is covered in snow, creating a landscape distinctive to this place."

He set two main themes for the project within this setting. "The first was not to simply consume the beautiful landscape as a view, but to place oneself within it and engage with it through bodily perception," Iriguchi said.

"The second was to accept that architecture, too, can be gradually eroded by the landscape, while seeking a distinct order that remains intact and exploring the universal possibilities of architecture," he continued.

Everyday materials finish the building: metal roofing, cedar cladding on the exterior and plywood walls inside.

"Familiar materials and finishes commonly found in Japanese timber architecture were used with the intention of creating the architecture from materials that are as simple and unpretentious as possible," said Iriguchi.

Inoshita Kenchiku carried out construction, with Umezawa Structural Engineers as structural engineer. Yoshikatsu Iriguchi photographed the project.

The house joins a run of recent timber projects in Japan, including Keiji Ashizawa Design's angular, cedar-clad House in Yatsugatake and YNAS's update of a traditional timber house in Miyakonojo with timber-framed canopies — a signal that the exposed post-and-beam language continues to anchor contemporary rural Japanese housing.