A house made out of lace?

It might be typical Japanese to use paper-like walls on a building to seperate spaces (inside or outside), without them being too rigid. A wall is, in traditional sense, more like a membrane that filters the stimuli.

Mount Fuji Architects Studio used this old principle for a house in Tokyo, but without doing so in a traditional sense. The architect himself compares the aim with that of, for instance, the famous Glass House by Philip Johnson: it questions the traditional needs and goals of a house, because of the site. But alas, there are not that many forests available in downtown Tokyo. So they had to come up with something different, and cladded the building with sheets, in which a pattern of cherry blossom trees is perforated. This creates a pristine effect, almost as if the building is dressed in lingerie: you can see something of the interor, but not quite, it's more a hint of the promise that an actual revealing. At the same time, it also creates a sense of privacy in the interior, by filtering out the city surroundings.

By using this type of skin for this building, the architects manage to create a sense of openness and freedom, but at the same time they made an enclosed, private house in a dense, hyperactive city.