Akatsuki: A European Chalet Infused with a Sense of Place and History

While Akatsuki was built by Japanese craftsmen, its heart is distinctly European.

Its Belgian owners grew up skiing in the French Alps and wanted the chalet to be filled with the elements and textures of home. Most of the feature materials and furnishings were imported from Europe, including the raw 22mm thick solid French oak flooring.

It was so foreign to the local builders that the owner recalls a phone call where she was told the wrong wood had been shipped.

“They called me and said, ‘Oh my god, this wood you’ve shipped all the way from Europe is really bad quality – we can’t work with it,” the owner laughs.

“And I thought, ‘What? This is the best wood there is!’ So I asked them to take a picture and send it to me, and I had to explain to them that this is what we like. At first they hated it because it’s very rough and they’re used to something that’s polished and perfect, but now they love it – they said they learned so much from the materials we used.”

The chalet also features a touch of local history, thanks to project manager Keith Rodgers of Taiga Projects. “When they gutted the old J-First Hotel and onsen (at the very top of Hirafu Village) before they demolished it in 2012 everyone was running in and grabbing light bulbs and fittings. I went out to the onsen and grabbed all the old fence wood. The Japanese people were asking me what I was doing because they thought it was just useless old wood. But it had this beautiful silver sheen to it so I gifted it to the owners and incorporated it into a few places in the house.”

Rodgers says this project was very much a collaboration between him and the owner. “I had a lot of fun working with the owner,” he says. “She’s a clothing designer so she’s got a very good sense of fabric and materials and interior design. It was a very fun, creative interaction and the finished product is very much a reflection of who she is.”

The family had a ski chalet in France, and when they built Akatsuki they made sure it had all the things the previous place lacked. One of their favourite features is the huge onsen-style bathroom. They’ll often come back from a morning’s skiing, jump in the bath to warm up, and then head back out onto the mountain.

The family comes back with friends several times a year, even though they no longer live in Japan. “We planned to sell the house but when we left but none of us wanted to so we kept it,” she said. “We’re always moving from one country to another so now the kids are teenagers they need somewhere they feel is their own, and this is it. We love to ski and we love the snow here, but why we keep coming back is because this is like our home now – we have our books and our stuff here and we just keep wanting to come back. Even my daughter who is looking at going to university in the US still wants to fly all the way back here for her winter holidays.”