There is a particular kind of arrogance in the way some buildings arrive in a landscape — dropped in, indifferent, as if the mountain were merely a backdrop for someone else's idea. In Hakuba, that approach doesn't just look wrong. It fails on its own terms. The snow returns every winter regardless of what you built. The lake keeps its own schedule. A house that argues with its site will spend decades losing that argument, one freeze-thaw cycle at a time.
At Lycia, we start from a different premise: the mountain was here first, and it will be here after. Our work is not to conquer that fact but to build in conversation with it — choosing materials that age the way the surrounding forest ages, forms that shed snow the way a pine does, orientations that welcome the low winter sun instead of blocking it. This is not a slogan. It shows up in specific, unglamorous decisions, and two current projects in the Hakuba Valley show what that looks like in practice.
Nakatsuna Lake House: a house shaped by its shoreline
Completed in January 2026 on the shore of Nakatsuna Lake in Omachi, the Nakatsuna Lake House began with a question we ask of every site before we ask anything of a floor plan: what does this particular piece of land already want to do? The answer was an L-shaped footprint — 133 square meters — that wraps around a portion of the lot rather than centering itself on it, leaving the relationship between house and water uninterrupted.
Built by Tres Homes using traditional wood post-and-beam construction, the house relies on a structural logic that has proven itself in this region for centuries: a timber frame that flexes rather than resists, suited to a climate of heavy snow loads and seismic movement. Inside, walnut surfaces bring warmth to rooms that face long winters, and a wood stove sits at the center of daily life rather than being an accessory to it. Triple-glazed windows, engineered to a UA value of 0.30, mean the house holds its heat instead of fighting to replace it all winter long — a quiet form of respect for both the people inside and the energy it takes to keep them comfortable.
Charred cedar: protection borrowed from an old idea
The exterior is where the philosophy is most visible. The Lake House is clad in charred cedar — wood surface-treated by controlled burning, in the lineage of the traditional Japanese technique known as shou sugi ban. The char layer isn't decorative. It's a preservation method developed long before synthetic sealants existed, one that makes the wood more resistant to moisture, insects, and rot without adding a single chemical coating. The building weathers the way the forest around it weathers — deepening, not deteriorating.
It is a small, telling example of a larger instinct: reach for solutions the mountain already trusts before reaching for ones invented somewhere else. Designed as both a family home for a Turkish-Japanese household and a seasonal rental, the Lake House had to work for two different kinds of presence — daily life and occasional stay — without compromising either. Durable, low-maintenance materials made that possible without asking the owners to choose between comfort and upkeep.
Mini House: the same logic, a different scale
Currently in planning as of June 2026, the Mini House takes this thinking to a more compact footprint — 96 square meters of living space on a 139-square-meter plot, developed again with Tres Homes. Its two-tone facade pairs wood with stone, echoing the material honesty of the Lake House, while a single-pitch roof does double duty: shedding snow efficiently and giving the small structure a sense of proportion that feels deliberate rather than cramped.
Smaller homes carry their own environmental logic — less material, less to heat, a lighter footprint on the land they occupy — and the Mini House is where we're testing how far that logic can go without asking residents to sacrifice the warmth and light that make a house worth living in.
Why this matters more than it might seem to
None of this is about certification or a plaque on the wall. We haven't chased an eco-label for either project, and we won't pretend a charred cedar facade solves the wider questions Hakuba faces as it grows. What we can say is narrower and, we think, more honest: these are the material choices, structural methods, and design decisions we can point to and stand behind, project by project.
Our Hakuba Hospitality & Development work is built on a simple conviction — that thoughtful design, real comfort, and a strong connection to the local environment aren't three separate goals to balance against each other. In a place like this, they tend to be the same goal, seen from different angles. Build with the mountain, and it tends to take care of the rest.