Kouichi Kimura's 73-Square-Metre Minimalist House Redefines Solo Living

Japanese studio FORM/Kouichi Kimura Architects has completed Minimalist House, a 73-square-metre home in Shiga prefecture that treats single-person living as an invitation to open space rather than a constraint.

The building sits on a hill overlooking Lake Biwa. Cubic volumes clad in corrugated metal and black render form the exterior. The street-facing facade is almost entirely blank. Everything opens the other way, toward the lake in the distance.

The house was designed for one occupant, and founder Kouichi Kimura told Dezeen the studio set out to challenge what that usually implies. "When hearing 'a home for a single occupant', people typically imagine a compact house," he said. "Here, living alone is regarded not as a spatial constraint, but as a condition that liberates space."

His description of the design brief is unambiguous: "Starting from the individual as the base unit, the house explores a new way of single-person living through the minimal composition reduced to the essentials, with the space that invites in the surrounding view, light, wind, and sound."

What does the house actually look like inside?

A tall void cuts through the centre of the plan and extends into a skinny, double-height volume projecting from the roof, fitted with a large window. Grey-plastered walls and dark stone floors run throughout.

• Ground floor: kitchen, dining space and study
• Upper level: living space and bedroom, reached by metal and concrete steps
• A separate single-storey washroom, connected by a glass corridor with sliding doors

The dining table, study and bed sit against large, deep-set windows facing the lake. "Each floor is designed as a single open layout," Kimura explained. "The double-height space vertically connects the upper and lower levels. Manipulating floor and ceiling levels gently articulates each space without clearly dividing them."

The upper living space has a second function: it doubles as a place for listening to music. "Within the double-height volume, sound resonates off the walls and ceiling, filling the entire space," he said.

Even the washroom placement serves the view. "Placing these wet areas away from the main structure creates a natural flow of movement in daily life," Kimura explained. "Walking through the glazed corridor in between allows one to touch the landscape, light, and breeze, offering a gentle transition in the everyday time."

Dezeen's published drawings for the project include two floor plans and two sections, documenting the layered floor levels and the projecting roof volume.

Minimalist geometry is a recurring register for the Shiga-based studio. Its previous projects in the prefecture include a blocky combined hair salon and home, and a skinny residence with carefully placed windows to avoid overlooking neighbours. Minimalist House extends that line of work with its most explicit argument yet: that the smallest household can justify the most generous section.

What this changes for compact-housing design is a working proof that 73 square metres, handled as vertical volume rather than accumulated floor area, can read as expansive.