TANK wanted to create a more spacious and flexible layout in the compact Japanese apartment, which was previously divided by a narrow corridor into various cramped rooms.

"I considered that the room should have flexibility and the tenant can arrange it as she likes," explains the designer.

The team began by making the bathroom much larger and inserting sliding doors on both sides, enabling an extra route between the bedroom and the hallway.

The narrow entrance hall is designed as a "Doma" - a traditional Japanese entranceway - with a bare concrete floor that contrasts with the raised wooden flooring of the living area.

An exposed larch frame extends out beneath a raw concrete ceiling, while vertical batons combine with plywood sheets to form a screen dividing the bedroom from the living area.

The bedroom and adjacent closet are doorless, with walls and ceilings designed to look deliberately incomplete.

"There are no doors for the bedroom or walk-in closet," explains TANK. "The walls and ceiling have an unfinished look, I leave it to the tenant's taste as to how to utilise these rooms."

A clear glass lampshade houses a bare bulb that descends from the ceiling in the bedroom, casting long shadows from the wooden frame.

Other projects we've featured by TANK on Dezeen include an apartment with floors and ceilings covered in the same boards and a Tokyo apartment with removable patches of carpet to be used as flip flops.

See more Japanese houses on Dezeen, or see our Pinterest board filled with Japanese residences.

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Located on the east coast of the bay in Kyonan, the hostel was designed by Yasutaka Yoshimura Architects as five rectilinear wooden buildings with grey-painted exteriors and exposed timber interiors.

Three of the buildings accommodate guest facilities, including bathrooms, communal kitchen and dining areas, plus large Japanese-style rooms with tatami mats across the floor.

Compact bedrooms occupy the other two buildings and are stacked up on two storeys to make room for 12 in each block.

"All the rooms have a view of the Tokyo Bay, each one becoming a space like a ship's cabin," says Yasutaka Yoshimura Architects.

Each of the eleven-metre-long containers has a timber frame and follows similar dimensions to a shipping container to allow it to fit onto a freight truck. "The client requested guest units that had the possibility of future relocation or addition," explain the architects.

A car park is positioned behind the buildings, but could provide space for three extra buildings in the future.

Yasutaka Yoshimura Architects previously designed a holiday home that looks like a children's shape-sorter toy.

Other capsule accommodation to feature on Dezeen include the Sleepbox Hotel filled with portable sleeping capsules and a six-bed dorm by Atelier Van Lieshout.

Photography is by Yasutaka Yoshimura.

Here are some extra details from the architects:

Hostel in Kyonan
2012 / Chiba Japan / Hostel

This private training center has 2 capsule-hotel and 3 tatami-style buildings. They are positioned with various angles of axis and all the rooms have a view of the Tokyo Bay, each one becoming a space like a ship's cabin.

The client requested guest units that had the possibility of future relocation or addition. While clearing these requirements and in order to ensure the necessary dimension for the bedroom spaces with economy, we utilised a wooden structural frame on a standard freight-truck of adequate dimensions.

Location: Kyonan, Chiba, Japan
Principal use: hostel
Category: newly built
Structure: timber, 1 storey
Completion date: 2012

Site area: 1,013.22 sqm
Building area: 149.85 sqm
Total floor area: 149.85 sqm
Structural engineer: ASA
General contractor: Ajiro Koumuten

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Named House J, the two-storey residence contains three split levels that enclose the central courtyard. There are few external windows, but most face inward towards the courtyard.

Half-height staircases run along the east and west sides of the courtyard, creating the three split levels, while the secluded roof terrace begins at the top of the spiral.

"This house was designed for a client in need of privacy and seclusion from the outside," says Keiko Maita Architect Office, explaining the rationale behind the layout. "The continuity between the interior and exterior spaces increases the size of the house."

The architects used horizontal timber siding to clad the exterior walls, plus wooden floors run through the entire house.

Part of the structure is raised up from the ground to allow a driveway for two cars to slot underneath.

Other recently completed houses in Japan include a weekend retreat shaped like a children's shape-sorter toy and an opaque house above a pet shop. See more Japanese houses on Dezeen, or see our Pinterest board filled with Japanese residences.

Here are a few extra details from Keiko Maita Architect Office:

House J

The "House J" is a small house (100m2) situated in Yamaguchi-prefecture, Japan. This house was designed for a client in need of privacy and seclusion from the outside. The site is narrow (120m2) and is surrounded by residences.

The "House J" has three floors that are built around a small inner garden: 1st floor: dining room, kitchen, family space; 2nd floor: study, reading space; 3rd floor: bedroom.

The three floors are connected together by a roof terrace.

The spaces of the house are open toward the inner garden. The inner garden is also visible from the roof terrace. The inner garden is exclusive in a narrow site but the continuity between the interior and exterior spaces increases the size of the house.

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Designed by Tokyo studio Yasutaka Yoshimura Architects, Nowhere but Sajima forms part of the Nowhere Resort, a series of weekly rentable holiday homes on the Miura peninsula of Kanagawa Prefecture.

The house is located on the harbour of a small fishing village. It has a triangular plan, with rooms on three storeys.

Each of the windows lines up with a different room and the ceiling of every room follows the profile of its window.

The architects describe the rooms as "thin tube-like spaces" with views directed towards the ocean. "We have created a place reminiscent of looking out to sea from the deck of a ship," they explain.

Sliding doors and screens allow different rooms to open out to one another, plus a circular cutaway provides views between the first-floor study and the storey above.

See more holiday homes on Dezeen, including a set of apartments above a yacht house on the Crimean coastline and a weekend fishing retreat in Germany.

Here are more details from Yasutaka Yoshimura Architects:

Nowhere but Sajima

Cutting resort environment out of urban environment

Nowhere resort is the resort program that is renting out weekly vacation house. Suggesting new urban lifestyle by making shorter the distance to weekend house from standard 3 hours up to 1 hour. The environment must get close to urban when shorten the distance, the issue comes to how to cut off resort environment out of there. Therefore Nowhere but Sajima comes to build long and thin tube-like spaces that bundle them into one home unit. The tube-like spaces are facing toward the ocean and at the same time intercept the sight from the next condominium. The building is controlling both privacy and scenery.

A home for guests

Nowhere but Sajima provides a temporary 'home' for its guests. The weekly rental service provided by Nowhere Resort is a relatively new method of operating resort properties in Japan, and allows different tenants the opportunity to inhabit a 'home' on a weekly basis. While the weekly term is short compared to a standard monthly rental and long compared to a hotel stay, this in-between length accommodates a new diversity of uses of a 'home'. Serving as a space for exhibitions, as a classroom or for wedding parties, the unit easily adapts to the imagination and invention of the tenant and in doing so also re-defines the range of activities that can take place in the 'home'. As well as accommodating the functions of work and business, the 'home' again becomes the space of many life events beside the basic function of 'inhabitance'. In acquiring a new program for use, the 'home' regains the richness of activity that can take place all around of life.

The building, a triangular block composed of tube-like volumes heading to the ocean, stands on a point of reclaimed land in a small fishing village. While the site meets the seawall and directly faces the sea, it is also faces other buildings across the water. To provide adequate privacy without the use of curtains, narrow tube-shaped spaces were bundled together and angled to provide openings toward the sea. The orientation of these tubes naturally blocks the line of sight from the adjacent apartments and while gazing down the length of the tube from inside only the ocean can be seen. While providing an escape from the tide of urbanism characterising what we normally call a 'resort', the design still maintains the key aspects of the resort experience. We have created a place reminiscent of looking out to sea from the deck of a ship.

Location: Yokosuka Kanagawa, JAPAN
Principal Use: HouseStructure: RC 3 stories

Site Area: 132.09 sq.m
Building Area: 63.88 sq.m
Total Floor Area: 176.65 sq.m
Max Height: 9,459 mm

Architect: Yasutaka Yoshimura Architects
Client: Nowhere resort
Structural Engineer: Akira Suzuki/ASA
Services: EOS+
Electric Services: comodo
General Contractor: Heisei Construction

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Located on the site of a former factory, Garden Terrace Miyazaki comprises a single two-storey building that features bamboo-clad walls and a large sloping roof with overhanging eaves.

A faceted timber canopy shelters the entrance to the hotel, leading through to a reception where guests are faced with a view of the courtyard.

Kengo Kuma and Associates designed this space as a "calm and tranquil environment", where a landscape of bamboo trees and pools of water provide a scenic setting to the glazed wedding chapel at its centre.

Restaurants and event rooms surround the other sides of the courtyard, while guest rooms are located on the first floor.

Kengo Kuma has completed several projects in recent months, including a timber-clad primary school in Tokyo, an installation of stone and water in Milan and an experimental house in Hokkaidō. See more architecture by Kengo Kuma.

Photography is by Fujinari Miyazaki.

Here's a short description from Kengo Kuma and Associates:

Garden Terrace Miyazaki

The hotel was built at a vast site near JR Miyazaki station, where a factory once stood. Around it houses and aparrments spread in no particular order.

Facilities of the hotel - guest rooms, banquet room and restaurants are arranged to circle the courtyard.

Loosely sloped roof came out as the result of each function underneath. It wraps the entire building - two-storey structure under the deep eaves.

Bamboo is planted and water is laid out in and out of the hotel and its courtyard, providing a calm and tranquil environment that stretches even to the residential area.

Completion: September 2012
Main use: hotel
Total floor area: 4562.04 sqm

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