Like most clients, Peter and Annette Lancy arrived for their first design conference with a box full of books and magazines. But unlike other clients, the Lancys had tagged many pictures of Japanese houses. One stunning image showed a spacious room with shoji screens drawn back to reveal a garden framed by a sweeping roof and its supporting columns. Another photograph showed an elaborate network of roof beams, one of which had been fashioned from a gracefully arched tree trunk. Annette was enchanted by the serenity of the Japanese rooms, and Peter admired the sophisticated joinery required to connect the timbers.

Because the temperate coastal environments of the Pacific Northwest and Japan are similar, it seemed likely that traditional Japanese architectural forms included design solutions that would work equally well on Bainbridge Island in Washington. Low-pitched roofs to shed rain, broad eaves to protect wide expanses of windows and doors, and verandas that bridge indoor and outdoor spaces are features that would work well in the mild Northwest climate (photo below left). But other than these obvious physical features, which I admired for their simplicity and primitive strength, I knew very little about the construction of a Japanese house. And while I intended to borrow a few ideas, I felt my efforts wouldn't be successful unless I understood how the Lancys planned to use their house and how a Japanese house is organized.

If the rooms were linked together around a courtyard garden, the courtyard could become an outdoor room at the core of the house. If the rooms were not wide, and if there were window and door openings placed on at least two sides of every room, the interior would get plenty of light. The house that was taking shape in my imagination shared some features with a traditional Japanese house. A garden placed at the center of the house and movable shoji screens (wooden frames with translucent rice-paper panels) to dissolve the barriors between interior spaces and the landscape are common elements in Japanese house design.

The U-shaped plan that finally emerged (drawing above right) is composed of three large rectangles and two smaller ones offset, as they might be in a typical Japanese house where the offsets help define outdoor spaces.

Rooms are linked to each other by an interior corridor that has several functions. The corridor acts as a circulation axis that bridges the three main zones of the house. It adds 5 ft. of living space to the edge of the kitchen/family room and eventually becomes the library when it reaches the bedroom wing (photo below). In a Japanese house it is typical for both the edge of a room and the veranda to serve as a corridor that links the rooms of the house together.

Although I was satisfied with the floor plan and with the way interior details had begun to take shape, I knew it would be a challenge to design a suitable frame for this house. Western-style timber framing originated in northern Europe. As it is practiced today, this framing style uses widely spaced posts (up to 16 ft. apart) braced by diagonal members. The frame is revealed on the inside but covered on the exterior by sheathing.

The opposite is true of traditional japanese timber frame, in which the posts are spaced more closely, have no diagonal braces and are exposed both inside and outside the building.

The wall of a traditional Japanese house consists of horizontal and vertical wood strips, covered with bamboo lath and plastered with a mixture of mud and straw. To resist lateral forces, such as those applied by strong winds or earthquakes, a Japanese house relies primarily on the flexibility of the frame and on the wall material installed within the frame. The Japanese approach of engineering a timber frame to withstand a force by moving with it is similar to the martial arts practice of redirecting an opponent's thrust back to its source.

For the Lancys' frame, I looked for ways to create Japanese impressions using Western construction methods and materials that our company understands.

By the way, the 12-in. dia. cedar logs were cut locally, peeled, cleaned and kerfed to prevent radial checking. Kerfing, a common practice of Japanese carpenters, involves making a straight cut into the heart and along the ful length of the timber. Wedges are driven as far as they will go into the cut, then they are tapped in farther as the timber dries. We faced the cut, with its wedges still in place, toward the ceiling where it was out of sight.

On most of our timber frames, we use stress-skin panels, which are structural panels made of rigid insulation and waferboard, applied to the exterior face of the frame. But on the Lancy house this technique would have concealed the frame on the outside. I was unwilling to compromise the honesty of the frame by adding trim to imitate the frame on the exterior walls. There was only one solution: the panels would have to be fitted between the timbers. Essentially, we replaced the traditional bamboo, mud and straw with polyurethane insulation and waferboard.

We used 2x4s, routed into the edges of the panels, to connect the panels to the frame. Expanding urethane foam served as a gasket between the two. The 4 1/2-in. thick panels left enough timber exposed to finish the interior and exterior walls with drywall and stucco.

In a Japanese house the color of the exterior walls would be determined by the kind of earth used in the infill mixture. Because we did not have that option, we colored the latex stucco a rather dark gray with a greenish cast, a color we hoped would help the house recede into the Northwest landscape.

The walkway to the house follows a meandering rock path that begins at the edge of the meadow and leads past a landscape of low pines to the timber-framed pergola that flanks the glass entry doors. Wehen the rock path crosses the threshold, it expands to form the floor of the entry, two steps below the gallery's polished concrete floor.

The Lancys wanted a radiant-floor heating system and had expressed interest in a tile floor. More than 3,000 sq. ft. of tile would have taken a big bite out of the construction budget, so I suggested concrete as an alternative.

We discovered an acid etching compound that, when applied to finished concrete, gives it a transparent color (Kemiko Stone Tone Concrete Stain, Epmar Corp., P.O. Box 3925, Santa Fe Springs, Calif. 90670; 310-946-8781). The transparency allows variations caused by the minerals in the concrete to show through. When the surface is sealed and waxed, it resembles glazed ceramic tile. Because it was scored into rectangular blocks, our floor pattern suggests Japanese tatami mats with their dark tape binding.

The living room combines sitting and formal dining areas. Low cabinets, designed to store prints and ceramic sculpture, line one wall. Wood for all of the cabinetry in the house was taken from the same resawn Douglas-fir timbers used in the structure.

Clearly, the large amount of glazing in the Lancy house is a major departure from the Japanese tradition. The windows were designed to fit into the frame without sills. They slide open in the wall plane and are placed low on the wall.

In spite of its broad eaves, the house is filled with light. We made sure of this by adding skylights in strategic places. Skylights in the veranda roof (photo below) let light shine through the glass doors and into the kitchen. Fourteen other 2-ft. by 2-ft. skylights were placed between rafters on the north and west slopes of the roof.