Despite being known as the office video game nerd here at RocketNews24, one of my secret passions is architecture. But not just any old architecture, oh no; the only thing that interests me is kyoushou juutaku micro homes where, either for the sake of the environment or out of financial necessity, houses are designed to make use of incredibly small or narrow spaces, at once cutting their carbon footprint and making use of land that would otherwise be left open or swallowed up by other, more grandiose properties.

With more than 70 percent of Japan’s total landmass unsuitable for building on account of sprawling forests and mountain ranges, the country’s urban population pay through the nose for real estate. In spite of this, many Japanese aspire to the typical Western ideal of home ownership, saving their money to buy homes much larger than they genuinely need, complete with plastic facades designed to look like bricks and mortar. Some, though, are shunning the notion entirely and are turning the act of simplifying both their lives and homes into a fine art, designing houses that are not just small but intelligent and stylish.
Come with us now as we take a look at just a few of Japan’s incredible micro homes.

1. Nada House Hyogo Prefecture







2. Hori no Uchi House Suginami, Tokyo




3. The Garden House




4. The Split Merchant’s House AKA ’63.02′ Nakano, Tokyo





5. Moriyama House

Moriyama House may look a little like a shipping container home from the outside, but once you step indoors you’ll wonder whether you accidentally entered a modern art gallery.
Essentially a series of glass boxes within a steel shell, rooms are separated by a narrow indoor ‘rock garden’ speckled with potted plants and fed by the sunlight entering from above. The first floor contains a kitchen/dining room and a bathroom, while the second floor provides sleeping and additional living areas which look down on the centre of this tiny house. We’re not entirely sure how we’d feel about people always being able to see us using the bathroom, though…





#6 Lucky Drop House Tokyo

Lucky Drop House is built on one of the thinnest plots of land ever: three meters at its widest and barely a metre its narrowest. As its name suggests, the house is designed to look like a ‘drop’ of water, tapering at the top, but we have to be honest and say that if we had to live here we might not feel especially lucky. Seriously impressive design nevertheless!


#7 Near House Tokyo

The Near House is actually made up of two buildings: the extremely narrow “gate house” at the front and a larger “main house” at the rear, separated by a tiny garden. The unique design makes use of an ‘L’-shaped plot of land alongside and behind an existing residence. It may be unusual, but we have to admire the designer’s decision to make creative use of this tiny strip of land.






#8 The House with the Big Gap Tokyo

Like something out of a platform video game, The House with the Big Gap stands on a plot of land measuring barely 30 square metres. Even so, its design manages to invite a little extra natural light into the building via a giant split that runs right the way through it, with walkways and flights of stairs in every single room. Take a look at the model below before checking out the interior photos and you’ll soon see what we mean when we say that this design is quirky.
▼ Two doors on each level are connected by walkways to the opposite side.


▼ Crossing sides.


#9 Showa-cho House Osaka

Despite being situated in a town named after a period in Japanese history, Showa-cho House is ultra modern and very stylish. The house was designed under the philosophy of ‘a small house with a great view’ and is essentially a series of interconnected levels with a giant glass facade. The owner may wish to invest in some remote-controlled blinds though…




#10 The Split House Tokyo

Undoubtedly the cutest in our collection today, this “Scandinavian-style” house gets its name from the fact that a small garden area sits between the front and back sections, dividing it into two. The two halves of the house mirror each other and are connected by a tiny wooden walkway (below). Putting the garden literally in the middle of the house means more light, which in turn makes a building nearly half the width of a standard house feel much less cramped.


By Western standards, some of these buildings may look like something you might wish you could build as a spectacular playhouse for your kids, but with a little creativity and clever life hacking it’s possible to live perfectly happily in a small home. Although the majority of these houses were designed so as to be as affordable as possible in heavily populated areas such as Tokyo and Osaka where land is sold at a premium, there’s nothing stopping those living in more rural areas taking a similar approach. After all, less land may mean a smaller home and less room for all your junk, but when we spend so much of our adult lives trying to save money to buy more new toys or pay off mortgages and other debt, perhaps it’s time we all started living a little simpler?

http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/07/2...-a-photo-tour/

minimalis mungil sederhana dan modern................only in japan