Modern cabin on stilts is an airy nature refuge

To design a vacation home at the base of Mount Bandai in Fukushima, Japan—an area known for its heavy snowfall—Lifestyle Koubou turned to stilts, which have also been deployed in a number of other projects by the Japanese firm. Here, at the home dubbed the "One Year Project," the firm designed two separate, elevated buildings of wood and glass connected by a bridge.

One building is designed for the "wet" areas of the home, like the bathroom and kitchen. The other is for the "dry" uses and features a bedroom and living room with a fireplace. This way, only one of the structures required plumbing. Local cedar lines the interior and exterior of both structures.

This popular vacation spot, which is surrounded by ski resorts, typically sees over six feet of snow during winter. The stilts allow snow to gather underneath the structure, while walls of glass frame the surrounding winter wonderland.

As for the name "One Year Project,” it’s all about the architects’ desire to leave a neutral impact on the environment. Only locally harvested wood was used for the structures. The construction process, which began with the felling of trees and ended with planting new trees, took exactly exactly one year.

Via: Contemporist