(c) Takumi Ota

• Villa in Karuizawa
  
  都内に住むご家族が週末に皆で過ごせる場所として設計した別荘である。
  300坪の森に覆われた敷地を見て最初に感じたことは、「なんと深い森だろう」という感覚だった。このような、都会では経験できない、深い森に包まれている感覚をそのまま残した建築にしたいと思った。
  敷地の樹木はほとんど伐採せず、敷地の切り土、盛り土もほとんどせずに、敷地のもつ勾配に寄り沿うように床レベルを緩やかに変化させ、そっと建物を置く。また、屋根も床レベルの変化と共に自然と敷地と同じ方向に流れる勾配としました。出来るだけ手を掛けず、この森の持つ傾斜と樹木をそのままにし、この土地が持つ摂理に耳を澄ませ、どうしたらそれに従うことができるかを考えた。それは建物を新築するというよりも、むしろ、もともとある「森」に人の居場所を増築するといった感覚だった。
  そのようなプロセスを経てこの別荘は森の中でひっそりと完成したのである。
  家族がここで過ごす時、時間とともに刻々と変化する森の存在を意識し、都会では忘れがちな自然の神秘と美しさを感じることとなるだろう。
  
  The villa was designed as a place for a family living in Tokyo to spend weekends together.
  The first thing I felt when I saw the 300 tsubo forest-covered site was a sense of ‘what a deep forest’. I wanted to create an architecture that would preserve this feeling of being enveloped in a deep forest, which cannot be experienced in the city.
  The trees on the site were hardly cut down, and the site was cut and filled in almost completely, with the floor level gently changing to follow the slope of the site, and the building was placed gently. The roof also has a slope that naturally flows in the same direction as the site as the floor level changes. With as little work as possible, we left the slope and trees of this forest as they are, listened carefully to the providence of this land and thought about how we could follow it. Rather than building a new building, it was more like adding a place for people to stay in the existing ‘forest’.
  The villa was completed quietly in the forest through such a process.
  When the family spends time here, they will be aware of the ever-changing presence of the forest over time, and feel the mystery and beauty of nature, which is often forgotten in the city.