House in the Forest

Florian Busch Architects. Location: Japan.

"This project begins with close to three hectares of barely touched forest. Only a short distance from Niseko’s ski slopes, the silence here is the antithesis of the vacation bustle that has turned several of the renowned ski area’s towns into a haphazard sprawl of increasingly suburban dimensions.
Solitude - Enchanted by the beauty of the region but disturbed by this relentlessly encroaching pseudo-suburbia.

Moving between the trees evokes curiosity. We are probing the surroundings. Every subtle movement changes the depth of our perception. The clearing that we have discovered is the site’s only place where the distance turns the trees into an abstract background. Yet instead of placing the building in the middle of the clearing (which would result in 360 degrees of background), we keep meandering between the trees at the edge to the clearing, protected by the trees around us."