10M by CUBO design architect
10M sets a calm residential agenda in Tokyo, Japan, where CUBO design architect places a house at the edge of greenery with distant sea views. The project draws a Japanese-American couple toward quieter days, aligning daily life to water and horizon. Within this house typology, a long pool and a measured entry sequence organize movement and sightlines, inviting the coastal landscape back into the rooms.
Salt air rides the slope as the approach narrows. A dim gallery collects the eye before heavy doors swing to a bright plane of water aimed at a green orchard.
This is a house in Tokyo by CUBO design architect, arranged at the fringe of a residential zone with distant sea views. The plan hinges on procession and orientation, using a pool to set the axis and a dark-to-light sequence to pace arrival.
Stage The Approach
Arrival begins like a cave, the path compressing and light dropping as one steps into a cool gallery. Then a pair of wide, weighty doors releases the view, and the pool runs forward toward the mandarin orchard as if pulled by the slope. The eye adjusts, depth reads clearly, and the house opens into a bright, expansive room tuned to horizon and water.
Set The Pool Axis
The pool is the protagonist: 20 meters long (65.6 ft), 5 meters wide (16.4 ft), and 2.5 meters at its deepest point (8.2 ft). Placed on the orchard line, it fixes the building’s datum and threads light, reflections, and sky into daily routines. Ripples throw moving patterns on walls, birds visit the edge, and the quiet of the slope turns into the clock of the home.
Unify With A Grid
Contrast heightens perception, then resolves into order. After the compressed entry and the tall reveal, a consistent 3.5-meter-high grid (11.5 ft) gathers rooms and passages into a steady rhythm. Guest rooms, a fitness room, and a generous wine cellar plug into this framework, so movement tracks the grid while sightlines continue to bounce off water and orchard.
Hold A Quiet Room
At the deepest point sits the tea room, held darker and more still than the rest. It borrows the bamboo forest next door, trading glare for a textured shadow and a single, framed view. Natural plaster, bark-covered logs, and motifs drawn from Sen no Rikyū are reinterpreted with restraint, giving the room gravity without pastiche.
Place Within Landscape
The house occupies a gentle plot of 5,200 square meters (55,972 sq ft) at the edge of a neighborhood, where orchard meets forest. With a limited palette and pared detailing, the architecture stays quiet so weather, birdsong, and the rustle of bamboo carry through the day. Light shifts, water answers, and the coastal setting feels more present—amplified rather than overwritten.
The closing view returns to water and trees, now familiar and close. One move sets the tenor: align the pool with the orchard. As evening falls, reflections soften and the grid steadies the rooms, leaving a calm afterimage.
Photography by Koji Fujii / TOREAL
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