Located in the idyllic Hokkaido island, in Japan, YEZO is a small retreat, nestled in a northern mountain range, using its dramatic landscape and an experimental design approach to create a sanctuary in nature.
Designed by Japanese architecture studio LEAD, YESO is actually a quite tiny house but definitely a place that guest can enjoy quite and private time in a setting defined by wood, stone, water, and light, whilst surrounded by ever-changing natural beauty.
The projects’s elegant and fluid space follows a highly minimalist. The wooden roof shell structure is built up from glue-laminated (GluLam) timber beams suspended from a central concrete chimney and clad with regionally sourced black slate. GluLam timber is a structural engineered wood product that reduces reliability on less-sustainable old growth-dependent solid-sawn timber. YEZO’s curved GluLam beams are carefully shaped to operate in pure tension throughout, resulting in a weight- and material reduction of 90% when compared to straight beams. This approach minimizes the project’s ecological impact and reduces manufacturing cost and delivery time while maintaining a highly qualitative spatial design.
