里山露台丨日本丨Tatsuro Sasaki Architects

Architects:Tatsuro Sasaki Architects

Area:648m²

Year:2025

Photographs:Junpei Kato

Lead Architect:Tatsuro Sasaki

Structure Engineering:KAP

​Mechanical Engineering:Kawamura MEP Engineering

Electrical Engineering:Kami Equipment Planning & Design

Lighting Design:ICE Ltd.

Landscape Architect:PLATdesign

Contractor:Sasahara Builders

Category:Cabins & Lodges

Project Architects:Daiki Kato

City:Futtsu

Country:Japan

Text description provided by the architects. Satoyama Terrace is a small-scale hospitality project situated within a traditional Japanese satoyama landscape, where natural systems and human activity have historically coexisted in dynamic balance. The project begins with a fundamental question: how can architecture engage with this landscape without reducing it to a static or consumable image? Rather than reproducing a nostalgic rural scenery, the design reinterprets the relationships embedded in satoyama and translates them into a contemporary spatial experience. Water, wind, soil, and vegetation are treated not as background elements, but as active forces shaping perception and occupation.

The project consists of dispersed cabins and a central sauna building, arranged across the site to create a sequence of environmental transitions. Movement through the site unfolds as a continuous encounter with subtle differences in airflow, temperature, light, and scale, forming a series of micro-environments.

A primary challenge was to avoid conventional civil engineering interventions such as retaining walls or rigid drainage systems. Instead, both visible and invisible conditions of the land were considered. Particular attention was given to underground water flows, ensuring that natural hydrological patterns remain uninterrupted. The ground is treated as a living system rather than a fixed surface.

The main building is organized around a deck terrace that penetrates the volume, forming a passage for wind descending from the mountain and for water to flow through the site. This terrace is slightly elevated on independent foundations, allowing both air and water to move freely beneath it and maintaining existing subsurface flow routes.

The main sauna space spans 12.7 meters without internal columns, prioritizing uninterrupted views toward the surrounding landscape. This span is achieved through a hybrid structure in which laminated timber beams are suspended from primary steel beams, allowing the roof to remain thin and visually light. Slender steel columns at the perimeter further reduce the presence of structure, reinforcing the continuity between architecture and landscape.

Through these strategies, Satoyama Terrace proposes an architectural approach that engages both the visible landscape and its invisible layers, positioning architecture as a mediator that sustains the continuous emergence of landscape through bodily experience.

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