Located in the wooded hills of Ashiya, Hyōgo Prefecture, the Koshino House (1981–1984) is a seminal work in Tadao Ando’s early career, embodying his rigorous commitment to spatial purity, material honesty, and a poetic engagement with nature. Commissioned by renowned fashion designer Hiroko Koshino, this residential project transcends the conventional idea of a house. It functions instead as a meditative composition of volumes, voids, and light. It is in Koshino House that many of Ando’s now-iconic strategies were first synthesized and articulated with clarity and conviction.
Koshino House Technical Information
- Architects1-2: Tadao Ando Architect & Associates
- Location: Ashiya, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan
- Client: Hiroko Koshino (fashion designer)
- Area: 225 m2 | 2,420 Sq. Ft.
- Project Year: 1980 – 1984
- Photographs: Flickr Users, See Caption Details
In architecture, the light is the strongest material. At Koshino House, I wanted to use concrete to create darkness, so that the light could become architecture.
– Tadao Ando 6
Koshino House Photographs
Context and Design Genesis
The project emerged from a specific confluence of context, client, and topography. Located on a sloping site densely covered with vegetation, the house had to respond not only to the challenging terrain but also to the client’s desire for seclusion and inspiration. Rather than dominate the land, Ando chose to embed the architecture within it. This decision set the tone for a design that would value restraint, intimacy, and harmony with the landscape.
This was a defining moment in Ando’s career: Koshino House represents a pivot from his earlier, more experimental projects toward a refined and disciplined architectural language. While modest in scale, it encapsulates the tectonic and conceptual principles that would become central to his later work, an emphasis on movement, sensory experience, and the phenomenology of space.
Spatial Organization and Formal Strategy
The house is composed of two elongated, orthogonal concrete volumes set parallel to each other and partially submerged into the hillside. Their configuration is deceptively simple. A narrow, subterranean corridor connects the two volumes, turning the act of circulation into a spatial experience defined by the contrast between dark and light, compression and expansion, enclosure and openness.
The first volume contains the primary living spaces, while the second holds the private quarters. The orientation and offset positioning of the volumes create dynamic interstitial spaces, courtyards, and framed views that choreograph a dialogue between interior and exterior. The sectional complexity, an effect of embedding the forms into the slope, allows the building to appear simultaneously grounded and abstract.
Circulation throughout the house unfolds deliberately, with Ando carefully curating the procession of spaces. The transitions are neither abrupt nor ornamental but meditative, emphasizing movement as a central design element. This approach recalls traditional Japanese spatial planning, where architecture is experienced through sequential encounters rather than static views.
Materiality, Light, and Atmosphere
Koshino House is a study in material discipline. Cast-in-place concrete is the sole structural and finishing material, offering both spatial continuity and a minimalist material palette. The walls, formed with meticulous precision, are not merely structural but expressive. Their surface bears the imprint of the wooden formwork, adding texture and subtle warmth to an otherwise cold material.
Light is the house’s most dynamic element. Ando sculpts it with architectural precision, introducing it through narrow apertures, clerestories, and deep reveals. The contrast between the heavy concrete and ephemeral light creates a tension that animates the interior spaces. Daylight is modulated throughout the day, casting patterns that shift with the time of year, making the architecture an instrument of temporal awareness.
Interior spaces are intentionally restrained, almost ascetic, allowing materials and light to become the primary agents of the atmosphere. The dialogue between solid and void is not purely formal; it is emotional and psychological, evoking silence, introspection, and a sense of refuge.
Critical Legacy and Architectural Significance
Koshino House has been widely recognized as a foundational project in Tadao Ando’s career. It introduces several strategies that would become hallmarks of his practice: the use of monolithic concrete walls as spatial boundaries, the integration of architecture into the landscape, and the use of light as a generative force in design.
The house also serves as a pedagogical tool, a case study of how a modest residential program can yield profound architectural insights. Its restraint in form and materiality stands in contrast to the excesses often associated with domestic architecture. Yet its spatial richness, atmospheric depth, and conceptual clarity continue to resonate with architects across generations.
As a project, it not only reflects Ando’s ethos but also articulates a broader cultural sensibility—one rooted in the Japanese tradition of ma (間), the space between things, and the appreciation of emptiness as a potent architectural gesture.
Nearly four decades after its completion, the Koshino House remains not only relevant but essential. It invites us to reconsider the fundamentals of architectural practice: how we engage the site, how we shape experience, and how architecture can express both permanence and impermanence through the quiet interplay of material, form, and light.
Koshino House Plans
Koshino House Image Gallery
About Tadao Ando
Tadao Ando is a self-taught Japanese architect renowned for his minimalist yet spiritually resonant architecture, characterized by the masterful use of exposed concrete, natural light, and spatial purity. Drawing from both Japanese tradition and modernist principles, his work emphasizes silence, emptiness, and the experiential qualities of space, often integrating architecture harmoniously with nature. Ando’s projects, such as the Church of Light and the Row House in Sumiyoshi, have earned him global acclaim, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1995.
Credits and Additional Notes
Lead Architect: Tadao Ando
Project Team: Tadao Ando Architect & Associates
Site Conditions: Steeply sloped, wooded residential area
Structural System: Reinforced concrete, in-situ cast
- Construction Type: Two parallel volumes partially embedded in the hillside, connected by an underground corridor
- Ando: Complete Works 1975-today by Philip Jodidio and Tadao Ando
