11 Homes That Embrace Wabi-Sabi Design

ByMyProperty Life

These one-of-a-kind abodes value the well-worn and the beautifully flawed above homogeneity.

Clean, lightweight furniture pieces of different styles have been integrated into the living room.

Striving for perfection might be a natural impulse, but the ancient Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi encourages a more liberating perspective. Grounded in Buddhism and revered tea ceremonies incorporating irregularly shaped utensils, wabi-sabi is an appreciation of the imperfect and impermanent.

Translated to a home setting, that means shunning the shiny and the uniform for the weathered and the one-of-a-kind. Skipping another run to the furniture store, say, and placing a scuffed vintage mahogany desk front and center. All of the wabi-sabi-inspired homes below celebrate simplicity and comfort through a modest palette of natural materials poised to age gracefully.

An Architect Builds a Quiet, Wabi-Sabi Weekend Cabin in New York

Located on a wooded property some 80 miles north of Manhattan, the Pond House is a weekend retreat for the founder of Brooklyn-based architecture firm Sundial Studios and his family. Set atop a concrete plinth, it features weathered steel cladding and blackened cedar siding. Glass doors and a covered porch stepping down to the pond strengthen the indoor/outdoor connection, while the interiors are awash in natural materials like sugar maple and fallen ash.
Read another article:Design Trends for Creating a Vacation Vibe at Home

Located on a wooded property some 80 miles north of Manhattan, the Pond House is a weekend retreat for the founder of Brooklyn-based architecture firm Sundial Studios and his family. Set atop a concrete plinth, it features weathered steel cladding and blackened cedar siding. Glass doors and a covered porch stepping down to the pond strengthen the indoor/outdoor connection, while the interiors are awash in natural materials like sugar maple and fallen ash.  

Bjorg Magnea

A Couple Embrace Wabi-Sabi Design to Travel Back to the Past

The guest bathroom features an organically shaped wooden table, which is suspended on copper and rests against the textured stucco wall.

Found in Taipei’s Bitou Hot Spring area, this apartment, courtesy of Wei Yi International Design Associates, mixes rusted metal, gold foil, cypress, exposed concrete, and terrazzo. Throughout, there is a feeling of calm, conjured by elements like lightweight, mobile furniture in the living room, an organically shaped wooden table in the guest bathroom, and a watshitsu room for meditating and tea drinking that is covered in Japanese tatami mats. 

Read another article:Hot Trends: 20 Best Farmhouse Style Kitchens in White and Wood

Courtesy Dean Cheng

A Carbon-Neutral Concrete House Is an Exemplary Infill in Western Australia

In defiance of its oversized neighbors, this sustainable 753-square-foot home in Perth, by architecture firm Whispering Smith, maximizes its small footprint through built-in furniture and textures of concrete, reclaimed brick, tile, and white metal. Devoid of walls and doors, the streamlined spaces flow into one another, and connect to the ample rear courtyard.

In defiance of its oversized neighbors, this sustainable 753-square-foot home in Perth, by architecture firm Whispering Smith, maximizes its small footprint through built-in furniture and textures of concrete, reclaimed brick, tile, and white metal. Devoid of walls and doors, the streamlined spaces flow into one another, and connect to the ample rear courtyard. 

Ben Hosking

Read another article:Revamped Small Barcelona Apartment Combines Multiple Styles and Finishes

See the full story on Dwell.com: 11 Homes That Embrace Wabi-Sabi Design

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    Proving that building on a budget doesn’t have to mean compromising on aesthetics, Uruguayan architecture practice Bercetche Estudio has completed the WS House, a single-family home on the outskirts of Montevideo. Built primarily with unpainted natural timber inside and out, the home takes on a minimalist design that highlights its simple palette of natural materials. A strong connection with the outdoors and access to natural light is also emphasized throughout the home.
    Located in the La Tahona neighborhood about a half-hour drive east from the capital, the WS House stands out from its suburban neighbors with its contemporary form comprising boxy, flat-roofed volumes of varying heights. Spanning an area of nearly 2,750 square feet, the home is shaped like a horseshoe that wraps around the main entrance. Oversized square pavers that lead from the road to the front door emphasize the geometry of the home, while the timber cladding is applied in both horizontal and vertical orientations for visual interest.
    The main entrance leads directly to the open plan living area, dining room and kitchen, which seamlessly connect to the outdoor terrace with a sunken circular pool through sliding glass doors. Flanking the main living areas are two bedroom wings: the master bedroom with an en suite bathroom is located on one side, and a secondary bedroom wing contains three flex rooms and two baths. Large windows let in ample natural light and views of the outdoors. “It is an easy-to-read house, built with sustainable and economical materials, which prove that with well-manipulated basic components, an expressive and energy efficient house can be made,” the architects explained. “[The house] shows great respect for the environment and, through a nice space distribution, takes advantage of it. Two opaque volumes separated from each other generates a permeable ‘in between’ that gives rise to all the common activities of the house.”

  • Chilmark House

    Martha’s Vineyard is home to the single largest concentration of our residential work and some of our earliest projects, including the Polly Hill Arboretum. Chilmark House, like many of these commissions, is immersed in the landscape and continually reconnects its inhabitants with the surrounding woods, pools of sunlight and nearby Vineyard Sound. Entire walls and windows are designed to vanish and erase boundaries between indoors and outdoors. We were guided in the earliest phase of the project by the couple’s wish for distinct public and private spaces and the site’s topography. The central public space—the living and dining areas–plus a sitting room in the guest wing, are oriented toward a kind of natural sun-filled well on the house’s south side. Interior load-bearing elliptical columns allow sliding doors and windows to make large openings to the south in the exterior walls. Opposite, on the north side, sliding windows create large gaps in the exterior, connecting the living room and kitchen directly to the woods and waters of the sound. Bedrooms are on the wooded edges, on the east and west sides. A roof deck, terrace and side decks create outdoor living spaces. Shortly after completion of this project, the couple asked us to begin designing a guesthouse nearby as their family continued to grow.