Preserving what is unique to this house and exploring new ways to use it

About an hour's drive from Hiroshima city, we drove through the mountains and, beyond the rice fields, a house topped with red Sekishu roofing tiles appeared. This house was the home of Arita's paternal grandparents. It was a place he had visited many times as a child, and it was a place he had fond memories of, but in 2018, his grandparents passed away and it became uninhabited.
All of her relatives currently live far away, and Arita's family usually lives in Tokyo. They considered demolishing the house, but they wanted to somehow preserve its "atmosphere," so her husband, architect Shogo Onodera, took on the task of renovating it.
There are several buildings scattered across the site, but the main house they tackled first is 120 years old. "It's based on a traditional farmhouse format, but because it has been expanded and renovated many times over the years, there are unnecessary beams and the structure needs reinforcement. We had to rethink the whole thing to make it a place that can be used in a new way, while still making the most of what was already there," says Onodera.




