Living in a big city has many advantages. Cultural, leisure and even employment opportunities are found in large urban centres. In Spain, this phenomenon is quite evident, with large populated areas, such as Madrid and Barcelona's growing metropolitan areas, while others are suffering a gradual process of depopulation. However, as is natural, some people prefer to live away from large urban centres, allowing them to maintain closer contact with nature.
Along these lines, many proposals have been developed to make rural life more pleasant and comfortable. One is the approach created by the Japanese studio Muji, known for its minimalist aesthetics and simple brand in household items, furniture, fashion and office supplies, among others. It has created a one-storey prefabricated house called Yō no Ie, featuring a large outdoor terrace to combine indoor and outdoor living.
Yō no Ie is designed to be used in rural environments and suburbs of large cities and is the first stairless house in Muji's line of prefabricated wooden houses launched in 2004.
The 74 m2 structure meets a growing demand for low-profile housing in Japan's suburbs, and the retail company hopes it will provide "a wide range of generations" with more choices of places to live.
"Yō no Ie allows you to interact with gardens that are difficult to create in urban areas," the company explained on its website.
This design is a compact, single-storey house with no fixed columns or partitions. Muji designed it to offer flexibility and allow owners to reconfigure its layout to meet changing needs. True to the brand's minimalist aesthetic, it has a pared-down interior finish comprising light wood floors and white walls.
Three full-height doors line one side of the house, opening onto the outdoor terrace with a recessed section suitable for a fire pit or garden. This deck area is designed to be a seamless extension of the house's interior so that the division between the two is made as even as possible. Muji hopes this promotes indoor and outdoor living, as the owner can move their furniture around to create an outdoor living space.
"The boundaries between outside and inside are ambiguous. From the bedroom to the deck to the outside, the space continues gradually, and the activities performed in the room spill out," says Muji. "Taking common indoor activities outside is a way of getting associated with a new garden."
The standard exterior finish for Yō no Ie House is Japanese chestnut with a roof made of galvalume steel sheeting. There will also be a variety of standard plans available to suit varying plot sizes.
It is currently only available in Japan and retails for 15,980,000 yen (about €127,200 at current exchange rates).
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