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Satoshi Kurosaki's Grace Residence commands immediate visual attention through its striking juxtaposition of archetypal domestic form and radical transparency, presenting a gabled residential…

Grace Residence by Satoshi Kurosaki is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 Golden A' Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design Competition Category.


GoldArchitecture· 2025

Grace Residence

by Satoshi Kurosaki

Client: APOLLO Architects & Associates Co., Ltd.

Golden A' Design Award Winner in Architecture Category

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Colors

The Design

About Grace Residence

Grace is a small timber framed residence for a family of three on a riverside lot on the outskirts of Tokyo. The house is designed for a work from home lifestyle. Storage, kitchen appliances and other functional features are built into the walls to enhance unity and continuity in the long, narrow space. Private rooms occupy the first floor, while the second floor is a single open room under a gable roof with exposed rafters and indirect lighting. A glazed front balcony with deep eaves forms a transition between work and leisure.

The Recognition

About the Golden A' Design Award

Grace Residence is a Golden A' Design Award winner, an immensely prestigious recognition granted to first-rate, marvelous, and outstanding designs. Golden winners are exceedingly innovative, visionary, and glamorously dazzling creations that reflect the prodigy, wisdom, and prowess of their designers. Grace Residence is expected to be a highly praised, trendsetting, and monumental invention that delivers unprecedented value. This Golden A' Design Award-winning design is a spectacular, respected project that highly benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Grace Residence creates intense feelings of desire, evokes passion, encourages creativity, and fascinates us.

Behind the Design

Press Kit

Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.

Unique Properties
A key design challenge was assimilating contradictory elements such as work/leisure, interior/exterior, and private/public in order to achieve that harmonious lifestyle within a limited space. In contrast to private areas such as the master bedroom and child’s bedroom on the first floor, the second floor consists of a single open room. The front balcony, a glassed-in intermediary space with deep eaves, plays an especially important role in transitioning between work and leisure. The furniture on the balcony has a similar aesthetic to that inside the house, which creates a sense of continuity, while the one-way glass blocks visibility from the road but lets in natural scenery, resulting in a uniquely comfortable atmosphere.
Dimensions & Packaging
Principal Use : Private housing
Structure : Timber
Site Area: 133.70m2
Total Floor Area : 106.16m2(49.69m2 /1F, 56.47m2 /2F)
Tags
GRACE, APOLLO Architects & Associates, House, Residence, Residencial,Architecture, Japan
Production Technology
Exterior Finish : Galvalume, Elastic Lysince Spray
Floor : Tile Flooring, Walnut Flooring
Wall : Wallpaper
Ceiling : Wallpaper, Spruce Pine Fir (SPF), Lauan Plywood, Walnut Lighting : LED
Research
Enclosing all functional elements within wall storage units allowed us to eliminate the visual noise of excess objects and enhance concentration on work. Meanwhile, the exposed rafters of the gable roof with indirect lighting set into them make this second-floor space both unusual and relaxing. Perhaps this design approach, which takes smallness not as a minus but as a plus in terms of coziness and comfort, will be even more sought after in the post-Covid 19 era.
Inspiration
This small wood-framed residence for a family of three takes advantage of the riverside views from its lot on the outskirts of Tokyo. Designed to cater to a work-from-home lifestyle, the storage, kitchen appliances, and other functional features are built into the walls to enhance unity and continuity in the long, narrow space. The result is a home where daily life coexists comfortably with work.
Project Duration
Design Period : March 2019 - August 2019
Construction Period : December 2019 - March 2021
Team Members
Satoshi Kurosaki
Image Credits
Photography : Masao Nishikawa
Videographer : Seiya Aoki

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