This week’s House of the Week, Charred Cedar House by the Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori, is located in a residential district of Nagano City, Japan. It sits on a plot of nearly 2,000 square metres, also landscaped by the architect. As with all of Fujimori’s designs, it draws inspiration from sources far removed from contemporary Japanese culture. Although trained as an architect, Fujimori has in fact spent the majority of his career as a professor of architectural history at Tokyo University, and this passion for historical buildings, as well as the critiquing of modern architecture’s often austere aesthetic and programme, permeates his work.

This particular house took its references from the caves in Lascaux in France that Fujimori visited on his travels. This idea is materialised in the opening and entrance at the front of the house and the form of the living space and kitchen. From this main space, the house divides into two bedrooms and a tea house in the mini tower, which is reached by a ladder through a hidden trap door. This attention to detail gives the home an additional sense of joy and specialness. It is clad in charred cedar planks, from which the house derives its name, which are filled with plaster to give its black-and-white zebra effect.