Excerpt: House in Jinseki by Reiichi Ikeda Design is set in a plateau region surrounded by a beautifully expansive landscape. The project renovates a main building, a barn, and an annex arranged east–west, restoring balance between old and new. The design reinterprets the traditional Igura-Tsukuri house style through dialogue-driven colored washi, harmonizing architecture, history, and place.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] Jinseki in Hiroshima, located 1.5 hours north of Fukuyama city, is located in a plateau region at an elevation of approximately 400 to 700 meters. It boasts a beautifully expansive landscape.
A main building, annex, and barn— They are arranged side by side in an east-west line, and we renovated the main building and barn as the first phase of construction from 2021. At this time, for the second phase of construction was renovating the annex, which is to be used as the guest room. The construction of the main garden and well, where one could get a full view of the mountains across the way, was gradually started. The snow started melting, and spring feelings arrived.
The detached wooden annex did not require reinforcement work due to its relatively recent construction compared to the main house and barn; however, its “newness” stood out as the only element disrupting the overall balance. To restore visual harmony, the aluminum window frames were replaced with wooden ones, aligning the annex with the charm and aesthetic of the adjacent main building.
Also, the design brings back the traditional “IGURA-TSUKURI” house style from the Kamo region in Hiroshima—a laid-back bungalow featuring a decorative upper story, expressed through its two-layered roof: “an upper roof” and “a lower roof”, similar to the exterior style of the surrounding buildings.
On the first floor, we designed three guest rooms and cleaning rooms, and in the largest guest room, we ensured a generous ceiling height of five meters by utilizing the original atrium structure.
Furthermore, the project took a new direction for the first phase of construction into a process of refining each room using client-collaborated, dialogue-driven colored Washi, with colors interpreted by Wataru Hatano, a Kurotani Washi papermaker. Each piece of Washi takes on a unique expression in every room, reflecting the atmosphere and intent of the space.
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