Architects Masahiro and Mao Harada, the principals of Mount Fuji Architects Studio, are mountain people. Veteran climbers, they hike parts of the Japan Alps annually with their office staff and named their firm after the country’s most venerated peak. With the arrival of bigger commissions, their practice, too, has taken off on a vertical ascent.
Founded in 2004, the husband-and-wife team got their foothold designing and building modest works with their own hands. Named XXXX House (for its crisscrossed frame), their first project was a one-room studio created for Masahiro’s father, a retired ship designer turned ceramist. Made almost entirely from laminated sheets of plywood, the building was erected with the aid of able-bodied friends willing to sacrifice a few vacation days. Together they turned the two-dimensional planes into eight three-dimensional, but nonrectangular, frames. Pinned at their cross points, these infrastructural elements add up to a 237-square-foot tube of space with a unique, X-shaped profile.
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