Articles by Hana Abdel

A “Home Around the Forest” is a weekend house in Karuizawa, Japan, for a couple with two children living in central Tokyo. The family was familiar with the area, and they stayed for many holidays in hotels nearby. Finally, they decided that they wanted their own hotel room in the forest, a 70sqm suite for a family of five to make the most of their holidays.

Set amidst a coastal landscape on the Arabian Sea, Red Vessel / laal Jahaaz (Hindi) is a hotel annex about an hour’s drive from Surat city in Gujarat, India. The context comprises sparse rural settlements, diverse flora marked with palms, and coconut trees with an omnipresent sea breeze. The design intervention is part of a larger resort master plan that caters to recreational and socio-cultural events. It has a small water park with swimming pools, a children’s play garden, congregation lawns, and an existing hotel building housing 35 rooms.

This house is located in Nishi-Tokyo City, Tokyo. The site looks up to a promenade that stretches like a horse’s back, and is planned as an atelier for the couple, both creators, and a home for their family of four.

While we were attuned to building homes and weekend houses, designing a place that feels like a weekend house required us to rethink the very concept of a house. Set in a typical gated community with a dense urban fabric, House of Concrete Walls is a response to this rather unusual brief. Striving to constantly be in dialogue with the outside, the house creates an experience of living amidst the serenity of nature.

The main concept is visual simplicity. The design was made up of functional elements except for the most decorative elements. Fortunately, the architect’s taste and our taste matched well. Windows, exterior materials, and interior materials were all simplified, so it was our purpose not to mix various materials. The design of the elevation is also planned with geometric figures and consists only of regular straight lines and curves. Red bricks were selected because there were many buildings built with red bricks in the area, and they wanted to fit in with the neighborhood by applying modern red bricks to the old neighborhood, taking advantage of a large number of commercial and residential, young and old people.

Positioning the land – Located in Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture, the surroundings along the Shukugawa River are quiet, with abundant nature and a long-established residential area. Due to the high value of land and the relatively high unit price per tsubo, there are many areas where land is densely subdivided into smaller lots. The site was a compact, flagpole-shaped lot surrounded on all sides by two-story neighboring houses. These conditions were by no means good.

Bringing natural light inward and allowing it to dance internally throughout the day, River of Life is deeply connected within its natural setting. As a testament to sustainable living and the need for the notion of the home to be a place of refuge for the owners, the entirely new build occupies its site with both a restrained and intentional philosophy. Responding to both past and present, the form also acknowledges and embraces the natural elements at its disposal. Focussing on an overall light composition and feel, the sum of its parts creates a calm place to both disengage and restore. The robustness of the base materials also offers a balance to the overall lightness, grounding the home.

This is a farmhouse for a rancher located on the Asagiri Plateau in Shizuoka Prefecture. Fuji. As the name implies, the Asagiri Plateau is a ranching area located at the foot of the 870-meter-high mountain on the west side of Mt. When I visited the area for the first time; I was amazed at the rapidly changing weather conditions of the mountain and the completely different appearance of the landscape during a single day, depending on the tilt of the sunlight.

Interior design plan for the Blue Bottle Coffee Fukuoka Tenjin Cafe, which marks its first branch in the Kyushu region. The planned location is a distinct one in the Tenjin area of Fukuoka city, situated within the precincts of the Kego Shrine. While one side of the cafe faces a busy street with heavy traffic, the opposite side opens onto the approach to the shrine, surrounded by moderate greenery and a tranquil atmosphere contrasting with the busy environment of the city. Given this contrasting setting, we naturally envisioned the cafe as a nexus connecting the opposing elements of “city” and “shrine.”