How This Japanese Architect Designed His Own Minimalist Home with a Wabi-Sabi Approach

Katsutoshi Sasaki, a Japanese architect, has fulfilled his dream of designing his own home for his family. The house is located in Toyota City between the Toyota employee dormitory and factory on a previously vacant land. Sasaki explored overlapping functions resulting in a house with no walls or doors, aiming to create a space where family and nature are connected and overlap. The design is simple, using a rectangular form with evenly spaced timber columns, with rooms connected by a central spiral staircase. The interior is filled with voids and thin floor plates that allow light to flood the space. Varying woods were used for the interiors, creating a textured, soft, warm, and robust space. The exterior uses red cedar timber painted a deep green to reflect the mountains and forests in Japan. Sasaki designed the house using the principle of wabi-sabi, a Japanese philosophy of appreciating beauty in imperfection and the passage of time. Sasaki has embraced this with his home evolving and