Six as One

In Karuizawa, six angled cottages gather like clasped hands, balancing solitude and family life beneath a single architectural gesture — Nendo.

Perched on a 5,800-square-metre hillside in Karuizawa with uninterrupted views of Mt. Asama, the Hand-in-Hand House reflects a distinctly architectural idea of family. Designed by Nendo as a weekend home for four, it rejects the assumption that togetherness depends on shared space alone. Instead, it suggests that individuality and intimacy can coexist—gently linked, like hands reaching for one another.

The residence takes the form of six compact cottages, each approximately twenty square metres, scattered along an expansive wooden terrace elevated on a platform supported by circular black columns that follow the natural slope of the hill. Each cottage is slightly angled in a different direction. Each houses a specific function — kitchen, dining area, bedrooms — and each is distinctly characterised, respecting, as Nendo describes it, the individuality of each family member. The six black roofs, varying in height and angled toward each other, are described as holding hands: a metaphor made architectural, unifying the scattered structures under a single conceptual canopy without erasing the separateness of each.

By putting together separation and connection, the Hand-in-Hand House creates small, distinct spaces that accommodate personal time while creating collective moments.

Inside, curved white ceilings enhance the sense of lightness. Large openings frame the surrounding forest. The wooden deck that extends from the terrace transitions directly into the wooden flooring of the interiors, maintaining continuity between inside and outside so that the threshold between domestic space and natural landscape is softened rather than fixed. Wood clads the walls. The forest is always present.

The balance the house strikes — between separation and connection, between personal time and collective moments, between the compact intimacy of each cottage and the expansive hillside that holds them all — is the project's central spatial achievement. Six structures, one shared terrace, one conceptual gesture, one family. It is, as Nendo intended, a serene retreat dedicated to bonds and beauty in equal measure.

Key takeaways

• Nendo organised the Hand-in-Hand House as six individually angled cottages of approximately twenty square metres each, scattered along a shared elevated wooden terrace that follows the natural hillside slope — giving each family member a distinct, characterised space while the shared terrace fosters collective moments between them.
• The six black roofs, varying in height and angled toward each other, embody the project's central conceptual gesture: described as holding hands, they unify the scattered cottages under a single metaphorical canopy without erasing the formal independence of each structure.
• Continuous material transitions — the outdoor wooden deck flowing directly into interior wooden flooring, curved white ceilings amplifying lightness, and large forest-facing openings dissolving the threshold between inside and outside — create a spatial experience that keeps the natural landscape of Karuizawa present in every room.