Florian Busch Architects has completed ‘House in the Forest’, an elevated timber residence, that as its name suggests, is immersed in the woodland of Hokkaido, Japan.

This project begins with close to three hectares of barely touched forest. Only a short distance from Niseko’s ski slopes, the silence here is the antithesis of the vacation bustle that has turned several of the renown ski area’s towns into a haphazard sprawl of increasingly suburban dimensions. Enchanted by the beauty of the region but disturbed by this relentlessly encroaching pseudo-suburbia, the owners, a large family, are seeking escape in the forest’s solitude. The site is an almost perfect square with 160-metre-long edges, filled with tall pine trees. The building branches out horizontally.

"Moving through the house is moving through the forest. As our views keep changing from far to near, the forest is both distant background and tactile environment." — Florian Busch Architects

The House in the Forest is not about a fixed form but an ever-changing dialogue with the forest. The eventually built is merely the result in a process of probing and responding to the surroundings to create a place where the family can be both together and by themselves, where they can become part of the forest.