YIA Ishiue Yoshihiro Architectural Design Office
House with a Doma｜Custom Home Examples by Architectural Offices23Picks
Author: Qurasuki Editorial Department
In a home with an earth floor (doma), the transitional space set between indoors and outdoors generates a unique expansiveness within the residence. Serving beyond mere entryways, connections to gardens, workspaces, and living areas allow these intermediate zones to blend into daily life, accommodating foot traffic in shoes. Introducing material textures like soil, stone, and tile yields expressions distinct from indoor rooms, naturally embracing furniture, plants, and gear. Capturing light and breezes from outside turns these zones into places to feel seasonal shifts. We introduce custom-built examples by architectural firms to explore how the theme of earth-floor homes is expressed architecturally in real residences.
Standing beside a river in Fushimi, Kyoto, this house accommodates a workspace on the first floor and living quarters on the second. In response to the streetscape of sake breweries, the exterior walls are clad in black charred cedar, while the textures of the materials are expressed plainly, both inside and out. Rough plywood walls and ceilings, along with an earthen-floored area that retains the concrete as it is, create a simple space in which the boundary between structure and finish is blurred. The careful handiwork of the craftsmen brings out the inherent beauty of the materials themselves.
A residence for a family of four on a site of just under 30 tsubo. Based on the requests of a husband who enjoys baking and a wife who is highly organized, the design realizes a space that combines simplicity, functionality, and playfulness. The first floor is organized around a café-like doma space and is configured so the family can live on a single level in the future. The second floor, with varied ceiling heights, becomes an expansive LDK connected to a deck terrace. The skip-floor third level includes a study, a children’s room, and a balcony, and the variety of places to inhabit gives the home a rich, expressive character.
A stoic residence housing a gallery, located in Nagakute City, Aichi Prefecture. The plan uses a courtyard placed at the center of the building as a focal point, allowing daily life to unfold beautifully. The entire ground‑floor slab is finished in steel‑trowelled concrete, and the exterior walls are unified with a mortar steel‑trowel render treated with a water‑repellent coating — simple wet‑applied materials that retain the traces of craftsmen’s handwork. The pared‑back, simple and tranquil spaces, stripped of superfluous ornament, present the occupant’s daily life and art in a modern manner.
This home stands amid a tranquil rural landscape. To embrace the rice fields stretching out to the south and the distant mountain ranges, a generous roof was set over the house, allowing it to blend gently into its surroundings. In response to the desire to operate a small shop, a through earthen-floored passage was incorporated into the home, creating a configuration in which the shop and daily life are naturally connected. It is a space that feels both like a home and a shop, and both like a shop and a home, with a sense of calm and softness.
A home with three gardens was planned on a flagpole-shaped lot at the end of a dead-end street. In addition to the courtyard at the center of daily life, a front garden and a rear garden were created in response to the gardens of the surrounding houses. Although the site is enclosed, the connections between the gardens create an open space that combines a strong sense of centrality with visual openness. The three private rooms surrounding the double-height living room and courtyard each maintain a different relationship with the family and the neighborhood, providing the flexibility to adapt to future changes in the family.
A home for a couple, their three sons, and their beloved dog, where each family member’s activities are gently connected. By arranging the entrance, wet areas, storage room, and other spaces along the east and west sides, the house is shielded from the bustle of its surroundings, creating an open-plan LDK with breezes flowing from north to south. The living room and dining kitchen maintain a sense of unity while creating distinct places through differences in floor level. A study, doma space, and children’s room that can be divided into three rooms in the future respond to the family’s diverse ways of living, while carefully crafted details that make the most of wood leave a lasting impression.
Built on a residential lot surrounded on three sides by neighboring houses, this home is for a family of five. With the theme of reconciling privacy and a sense of openness, the ground floor contains an exposed cast‑in‑place concrete hobby space equipped with a motorcycle garage, and the second floor contains a generous living/dining/kitchen (LDK) wrapped in the warmth of wood. A central spiral staircase connects the spaces volumetrically, and light streaming from the toplight spreads throughout the residence. Although the plan provides no openings toward the street, a bright and expansive living environment is achieved through the careful layering of materials and the deliberate treatment of light.
Tsujido House is a residence in a residential neighborhood of Tsujido, where the double-height space and loft create a three-dimensional sense of spaciousness. With sightlines extending from the LDK to the second floor and loft, the compact home achieves a generous sense of openness. Light and air are drawn throughout the house, creating a comfortable living environment. Abundant wood lends warmth and softness to the interiors, while tile accents add a measured sense of refinement and tension, bringing together warmth and sophistication.
Built on an urban corner site, this home was planned as a courtyard house that gently connects the interior and exterior around a central courtyard. Large openings, a void, and continuous tiled flooring heighten the sense of openness, while fittings made with washi-paper mesh and white wall surfaces that softly receive light delicately adjust the home’s distance from nature. The generous first floor, where the family gathers, and the second floor, enveloped in tranquil light, are linked by gradations of light, creating a rich living environment in which nature can be felt close at hand despite its urban setting.
A residence inspired by an environment like a "blank" residual open space where the sky opens widely, located at the back of a densely built residential area. For a family of five who enjoy outdoor play, the aim was to create spaces that connect with the outdoors and the neighborhood while allowing family members to sense one another. Generous gardens are provided to the north and south of the building, and a multipurpose doma space with no predetermined use is positioned at the center. By gently connecting to the gardens and each room, it becomes a place where the family naturally gathers. In addition, by opening to the neighborhood while maintaining an appropriate distance from the road and adjacent properties, the design fosters opportunities for community interaction and simultaneously enhances the richness of both the dwelling and the street.
This residence is situated within Kamakura’s verdant surroundings. The site lies at the end of a narrow lane in a tranquil location with mountain views extending to the north and south. To capture these natural vistas, large two‑story‑high windows are provided on the north and south elevations, allowing views of the garden and surrounding greenery from the first‑floor living/dining/kitchen (LDK) and the second‑floor bedroom connected via a double‑height void. On the street side, wooden lattice doors are installed and curtains provided internally, enabling layered control of privacy through the modulation of sightlines and daylight.
This residence, sited adjacent to a park in the city center, articulates a distinctive spatial composition through a triangular floor plan. It gently screens external sightlines while maintaining an open spatial character. An integrated rental space reconciles the need for privacy with a calibrated openness to the public realm. Internally, the program is compact and efficiently arranged, with streamlined circulation that connects the spaces without wasted movement.
This residence finds new value in circulation spaces such as corridors and staircases. At the center of the house is an atrium-like inner garden ('uchi-niwa') into which light pours from a skylight. While serving the functions of the entry and the stair circulation, it is conceived as an interior garden where plants can actually be grown. Concrete-finished floors and a spatial arrangement that blurs inside and outside create an environment that brings nature close at hand. Rather than merely lining up private rooms, the design gently links them through generous shared spaces, fostering a sense of family presence and continuity of daily life.
A compact residence with a total floor area of approximately 22 tsubo, built on a hill overlooking the sea at Futtsu. The interior is configured like a studio with minimal partitioning, creating a generous sense of openness within a limited footprint. From the LDK (living-dining-kitchen) one can take in a sweeping view of Tokyo Bay, and the bathroom offers the luxurious prospect of Mount Fuji. A doma kitchen integrated with the entrance provides a light, direct circulation and immediate access to the garden. A small home for enjoying rich moments where sea and sky, landscape and daily life are gently connected.
This renovation reinterprets a 33-year-old, 102-square-meter condominium apartment with a garden to suit the family’s lifestyle. The layout was reconfigured as an open, airy plan through which light and breezes can pass, while the diagonally positioned living room door guides the eye toward the greenery of the garden. The kitchen counter, positioned at the center of the home, brings together features that support household tasks, work, and the children’s development. By carefully organizing storage and circulation, the renovation creates a home that comfortably supports the demands of everyday life.
A two-family home that replaces two residences where generations of families had lived for many years. Taking advantage of the site’s location at the end of a T-junction, the design creates an open living environment in the city through openings that allow views to extend over the street. A large window beyond the curved wall brings the surrounding townscape and sky indoors, while the L-shaped building layout delivers soft light to each room. With circulation planned to accommodate life with a dog and a custom-built bench in the second-floor LDK, this is a home designed to foster rich, shared moments across generations.
This residence is a renovated 50-year-old house reborn as a private house for richly enjoying time alone. Making use of light pouring in from a skylight, the first floor is laid out as a one-room space centered on a doma (earth-floored zone). The living room, work space, kitchen, and bathroom are loosely connected, creating a deep, open spatial composition. On the second floor a training space reminiscent of a dance studio has been provided, with design features throughout to enable daily physical activity. It is a quiet retreat for restoring body and mind while enjoying time that is true to oneself.
Built on land passed down through generations, this is a rebuilt house for a child-rearing family. Confronting the challenging condition of a densely developed site enclosed by neighboring buildings and walls, the building is set at an angle to the lot to capture light and breezes from multiple directions. The resulting residual voids establish an appropriate separation from the surroundings and nurture a gentle connection with the local community. Internally, sightlines and circulation are deftly orchestrated to create a calm residential environment that preserves privacy from external views. On a site where old and new modes of living intersect, this home allows nostalgia and contemporary life to coexist.
A residence in Obama City, Fukui Prefecture, for a family that runs a steel fabrication plant. The layout and materials were selected by carefully considering the sense of distance from the adjacent factory. Inside, a circulation route was planned around a handmade Japanese-style room constructed with steel frames, allowing the family to move freely throughout the house. Steel furniture and staircases made by the family themselves are placed throughout, creating a dialogue between the presence of steel as a material and the warmth of craftsmanship. By bringing the activities of the factory into the life of the home, this is a richly lived-in residence where the character of the family comes alive in every detail.
This renovation restores a Taishō-period residence in Nara City. Faced with damage from water ingress and termite infestation, and given conditions that made rebuilding infeasible along with a desire to retain the machiya character, refurbishment was chosen. A compact living room is placed at the center, while seismic resistance and thermal insulation have been upgraded to contemporary standards. The plan adopts a nested configuration in which the core is wrapped by semi-outdoor spaces—such as the entrance, engawa (veranda), and a book repository—thereby preserving the machiya-like spatial quality in which interior and exterior are gently connected.
A residence that responds to the historic townscape of Kyoto’s Shimogamo while contemporarily reinterpreting the ambiguity and flexibility inherent in Japanese architecture. Through eaves, a through-earth-floored space, and wet-edge verandas, the house gently connects inside and outside, bringing changes in light, wind, and the seasons into everyday life. Its spacious, non-prescriptive configuration responds flexibly to the growth of its inhabitants and the passage of time. Rather than a completed vessel, the house is designed as a “place” that continually nurtures relationships among people, the environment, and everyday life.
Located in a suburban residential neighborhood, this home softens the boundary between inside and outside. Outdoor spaces such as the courtyard and terraces are connected three-dimensionally with the living room and individual rooms through skip floors, creating a diverse range of places to inhabit. Deep eaves and flower-patterned breeze blocks bring in light and air, drawing the trees of the park and the townscape into daily life. The configuration allows each family member to spend time as they wish while still sensing the presence of the others. Enveloped in the comfort of a tree’s shade, the home balances a sense of openness with privacy.
This dwelling was realized after careful deliberation beginning with the search for the site. To the north lies the greenery of a park, beyond which the landscape of the Seto Inland Sea unfolds, and the gently changing views have been incorporated into everyday life. By opening generously to the north and limiting fenestration on the south elevation, natural light and breezes are modulated for comfort. A deep terrace gently links interior and exterior, creating a sense of shelter and spatial depth. It is a home where one can spend ordinary daily moments together with a rich landscape.
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