New house in an old neighbourhood of Wroclaw, Poland, in the NYT today. Spruce on the outside, particle board on the inside, and the whole thing cost US$80,000 to build.

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“Our lighting is hand-built in Japan from natural materials, including the hand-made paper (washi) of Eriko Horiki, the bent Japanese cedar of Toshiyuki Tani’s Wappa series, the coiled beech wood of the Bunaco Lacquer Ware Company, and the todomatsu pine slats of Takumi Kohgei.

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This house is called the Yakisugi or “charred cedar” house. Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori is using a traditional Japanese technique of charring as a way to finish and preserve wood. See another charcoal house by Fujimori here.

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This is a PS to the earlier Living with boulders post. Thanks to David W. for telling me about this town. It’s the Spanish town of Setenil, or Setenil de las Bodegas, and many of its original houses are built into natural caves under a rock overhang.

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Thanks to photographers Molly Des Jardin (cat slide), Ethan and Kohmura Masao (Fomal Haut) for these photos of rural Japanese houses. So few materials, so harmoniously put together. Many of the photos are from an open air museum in Japan, where traditional houses from different regions have been transported and reconstructed.

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From the National Museum: of Ethnography in Japan: “At the end of the Edo period, when the exhibited house was constructed, villagers of Akiyama mainly grew beans and such millet grains as cockspur, foxtail millet, and buckwheat.

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