Hara house is located in the agricultural village in Nagaoka city, Niigata prefecture. Giving consideration to the functions onsite, such as parents' house, storage areas, and private rooms; most functions that are required in a fully self-reliant house were already present on site. Our design direction was to create a building that revitalizes the structures already present on site and have the potential to adapt to new functions as the need or mood arises. We started our design by conceptualizing a small building as an ‘incomplete’ remote extension of the main house. The building is not fully self-sufficient and thus draws from its setting and relies on the surrounding buildings to fully function and even engages the village to create a thriving community.

The building emulates its surrounding, which has many vinyl houses and work sheds, and uses 120mm square timber members, to create a simple series of ‘A frame’ trusses. This structure creates an image of a large tent; a stiff yet giving structure which assimilates all the human behaviors. Storage, partitions and private rooms have been removed, as much as possible, to simulate one large open space that adapts to the user’s needs. In this situation, one cannot help but rely on the support of the other buildings around it, thus jutting out of the building envelope and promoting the use of the existing architecture.