Takeru Shoji Architects has completed a home in the Japanese city of Uonuma, with small rooms suspended above a double-height living space which sits in a "live-in foundation".
Called M House, the home eschews the conventions for building in Uonuma, which has a climate characterised by hot, humid summers and cold winters with heavy snowfall, by creating a space that is open to the environment rather than shutting it out.

Structures in the city are often elevated on high foundations with thick walls, creating what the practice described as "an isolation between inside and outside" which they were keen to avoid.
Takeru Shoji Architects drew on traditional external buffer spaces such as verandahs and sunrooms and designed the majority of the home as an exposed living, kitchen and dining space opening on to a south-facing terrace. Smaller private rooms are placed at the house's northern end.
"We didn't want to carry forward this convention of separating the inside and outside thus propagating the feeling of being inside one's own environment," explained the studio.
"We wanted the residents to fully enjoy their landscape and its setting."

The home follows the tradition of a high concrete foundation to deal with heavy snowfall, but instead of placing the house atop this foundation, it has been designed as a "live-in foundation" which the home steps down into.
"This raised reinforced concrete foundation is firmly insulated...