Schenk Hattori, an architectural practice with offices in Antwerp and Tokyo, has built a detached house in Niigata (JP). The basic concept of the house harks back to the origins of the Japanese use of shoji, the traditional sliding panels.

Any reflection on Japanese architecture must take into account Japanese spatial concepts, such as the word ‘Ma’, which denotes a relationship between time and space. In the West, we have no word that conveys the same meaning; we simply translate it as ‘interstitial space’ or ‘negative space’.