Located in Hiroshima, Japan, this house has quite the minimalist and modern exterior, but head inside and the you’ll discover a traditional tamped earth floor. Japanese architect Makoto Tanijiri of Suppose Office created it with natural local materials for a rustic, earthy effect.
The home is filled with sliding walls and windows and traditional, simple materials, allowing residents to easily fill the space with their own furniture and belongings without worrying about the current style. He used white surfaces, wood, and multiple levels to create a flexible, comfortable atmosphere.
The traditional floor is affordable, made of local materials, and keeps the space warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It is virtually effortless to install, and yet another example of how we can use our natural outdoor materials to create a cozy, minimalist living space that is still close to nature.
I like it!
Like the concept, but isn’t it going to be difficult to keep the house clean if you are going to be tracking sand and mud everywhere and on your furniture, bed etc.
This is very much like the old traditional Japanese Town house. You’ll notice the shoes in the photographs. In Japan they have a very strict shoes and no shoes zone. Even the littlest children follow these rules. So, a foot that touches the dirt must have a shoe on and when going from the inside to the outside, you step into the shoe before you step on the dirty part of the floor. You might think its impractical, but once you’re used to it, its really quite easy to slip in and out of shoes or slippers in the various rooms. We do that in our home and we live in the US. We don’t want to drag kitchen grease around the house, so we have kitchen slippers to walk in. Its amazing how clean the carpet stays.
Having said that, I’m not too sure I would like it either. Especially if you have house pets.
What about bugs?