The Pettanco House 2 is located at an altitude of 1,160 metres in Chino, Nagano, Japan. It is a house for a couple and their child. The site is long from east to west and there is a magnificent view of mountains to the western side towards Chino city. The client is a landscape designer and he has done several works with architects. He wanted to move from Kamakura to Chino in order to realise his wish of owning and creating his own garden. He was also strongly fascinated by the scenery around Chino, and all of that has motivated him to relocate himself together with his family to this mountainside city.

Our client and we have previously visited our formerly designed house, Pettanco House. He liked it very much and hence we had decided to expand the idea for his new home based on the first Pettanco House. For that, we had come along with five rules to keep up with the concept of the first Pettanco House. There were some changes to the original concept. The main alterations were: 1. We extended the length of the original by 2 ken (the Japanese modular system. 1 ken = approximately 1.82m) to the south-north directions. 2. The entrance was placed along the side-gabled side instead of the original front-gabled side. 3. The alignment of the sitting room was swopped opposite which had given a significant difference in the space inside the house.

Since we already realised that the plan for the first Pettanco House could become one of our prototype models from the points of the ‘local production for local consumption’, timber preparation, high applicability for customisation, and its practical cost. Thus, the case for Pettanco House II for the new environment (in terms of the altitude, direction, amount of snowfall, light, wind, and inclination of the plot) has become a very interesting case.