Kuma & Elsa’s Nakano House: Apartments Around Translucent Huts

This article examines Kuma&Elsa’s Nakano House project in Fukuoka Prefecture. The top two floors of a concrete apartment block have been renovated to recreate the spatial qualities of a traditional Japanese engawa.

The project creates two distinct homes. There is a sixth-floor apartment for the client and a seventh-floor unit for her son’s family.

Each home is centered around a modular “hut” that acts as a house within a house.

Engawa-inspired renewal on a concrete block

In Nakano House, the architects introduce a central hut—a steel-framed, house within a house—anchored to the existing concrete floor plates and braced to the ceiling with steel cables. This reshapes how residents move through the space.

Private bedrooms are fused with shared living areas along a perimeter engawa-like corridor. The design uses light, materials, and flexible boundaries to blur inside and outside, reimagining vertical living across two adjacent floors.

The hut as a house within a house

The hut sits at the core of each apartment and serves as a movable, adaptable hub. Its walls are made of translucent sliding plastic screens in timber frames, letting bedrooms and living areas open onto the surrounding engawa zone.

In this zone, kitchen, dining, and bathroom functions are located. The hut’s interior features timber flooring that extends outward, forming a zigzag engawa edge that meets the concrete slab.

This layout emphasizes a continuous flow between intimate and communal spaces. Timber shutters and curtains on the hut’s outer windows help regulate light and privacy.

Key design features of the hut

• Central hut fixed to concrete floor plates and braced to the ceiling with steel cables.
• Translucent sliding plastic screens in timber frames allow internal rooms to open onto the engawa-like perimeter zone.
• Timber flooring extends outward to form a zigzag engawa edge against the surrounding concrete slab.
• Timber shutters and curtains provide adjustable screening of outer windows.
• Sliding glass doors access balconies on the building’s sunlit southern side, strengthening interior–exterior connections.
• Roofs of the huts are finished in fire-resistant plasterboard and intentionally left rough to introduce texture and patina.
• Similar rough plaster textures are echoed in the hut’s bathroom walls.
• The hut boundaries are flexible, enabling extensions that connect different areas into a continuous living environment on each floor.

Materiality, patina, and tactility

Kuma&Elsa chose to preserve unfinished plaster and rough textures. The fire-resistant plasterboard roofs and rough plaster in the bathrooms create an intentional patina that stands out against the contemporary concrete building.

This approach shows that even a newly renovated home can display traces of time and use. The interior gains a layered character that echoes traditional Japanese ideas of texture and resonance.

Spatial logic and light

The huts are positioned on each floor, and balconies face the southern sun to enhance the indoor–outdoor relationship. The engawa-like perimeter acts as a circulation and social space.

The hut’s internal screens offer privacy as needed. The dual-apartment arrangement on two floors creates a living system where boundaries between private and communal areas are flexible, letting families adjust their spaces as life changes.

Photography and recognition

Documentation for Nakano House was authored by Shohei Kuma. His imagery captures the balance between raw, unfinished surfaces and refined timber detailing.

The project shows how architectural strategies can reinterpret traditional Japanese spatial concepts. This is achieved within the framework of a modern, urban concrete block.

 
Here is the source article for this story: Kuma&Elsa arranges Japanese apartments around translucent “huts”