Hyggehäuser began as a graduation project in architecture. It became a study in how physical space shapes everyday behaviour — and how a digital layer can help make community visible. The building creates the conditions. The platform helps residents navigate them.
- Location: Fushimi Ward, Kyoto, Japan
- Year: 2022
- Type: Graduation Project
- Disciplines: Architecture + UX Design
- Scale: Mixed-use residential complex
- Status: Academic proposal
The Challenge
Modern apartment living places people in close physical proximity while offering almost no infrastructure for actual connection. Residents share walls but not lives. The newly arrived resident — unfamiliar with the neighbourhood, without established social networks — was at the centre of this inquiry. The challenge was to design an environment where community could emerge naturally, without forcing it.
The site before — monolithic block on the riverfront
Contextual Research — Understanding the Environment and Its Users
Good design starts with observation, not drawing. Before touching a pencil, I mapped the site the way a UX researcher maps a user environment — looking for existing behaviours, latent needs, and missed opportunities.
Fushimi Ward along the Hōkawa River already had everything needed for connected community living: a quiet waterway, cycling infrastructure, a supermarket, small local shops, a kindergarten nearby, and low-traffic residential streets. The existing apartment block on the site sat in the middle of all of this and ignored every single one of those assets.
The design problem was not about adding something new. It was about removing what was blocking what was already there.
Contextual research map — pedestrian flows, cyclist routes, existing amenities and social infrastructure. Before / after site analysis.
Site model — existing building footprint showing what the current block ignores about its context
Research That Shaped the Thinking
Understanding what already works — and why
Before designing anything, I needed to understand what had already solved the problem I was trying to solve. Not to copy the form — but to understand the human reasoning behind it. What spatial decisions actually lead to community? What happens when you design for variety instead of uniformity?
BIG — 79 & Park, Stockholm
Analysing 79 & Park revealed the core insight: varied unit composition is not an aesthetic choice — it is a social one. When every apartment is different, the building stops assuming that all residents have the same needs, the same family structure, the same relationship to privacy and community.
The terrace-block form creates a gradient of outdoor space at every level — from deeply private balconies to semi-shared landings to fully communal ground floor areas. That gradient is the architecture of choice: residents can be as visible or as withdrawn as they want to be, on any given day.
"If all people are different, then why are most of the apartments the same?"
— Bjarke Ingels
79 & Park, Stockholm — BIG Architects. Terrace-block form and varied unit composition.
Model research — terrace gradient studies
Unit variation research — section through stacked typologies
Users & Design Goals
The project is grounded in five resident profiles — families, couples, single residents, elderly households, and shared houses. Each needs a different balance of privacy, access, and community.
Three guiding goals shaped every decision:
Spatial Concept
構成 / Eight shifts from isolation to community
Eight spatial shifts — from isolation to community. Concept diagram.
Five residential blocks circle a shared courtyard. Daily movement is routed through common space, not around it. The riverfront was reactivated through terraces, gardens, and a stepped path to the water.
Site plan — five residential blocks organised around the courtyard
Resident type zoning diagram
Section A-A' — terraces stepping toward the river. Hover to zoom · Click to enlarge.
Housing as a Small City
A key hypothesis of the project: residential buildings should function as mixed-use complexes — small cities in themselves. When everything a resident needs is within the same building or courtyard, the daily pattern of life changes fundamentally.
Instead of commuting to work, cycling to a café, driving to a gym, and then returning to an isolated apartment — the resident moves through a layered environment where those activities are woven into the architecture itself.
Conventional daily pattern
Hyggehäuser daily pattern
The programme reflects this: each block contains private units, shared terraces, a café, workshop and studio spaces, a kindergarten, a sports studio, a farmers market space, a coin laundry, a lounge, and event spaces. These are not amenities — they are the social infrastructure of a neighbourhood, compressed into a single site.
Programme diagram — ground floor plan showing mixed-use layout at 1:400
Process
The project evolved through physical model studies, diagram iterations, and scenario-based problem solving. Each cycle tested how people move, meet, and pause in the building.
Exploring modular unit layouts and terrace configurations
Testing visibility and privacy gradients between units
Physical model — aerial courtyard view
Physical model — river edge relationships
設計ビジョン / Design Vision
The design vision was always human before architectural. Before drawing a single section, the question was: what does it feel like to live here? What happens on a Tuesday morning? Where do children play? Where does someone go when they want to be alone — and where do they go when they want to find someone?
The watercolour sketch below was the first image of the project — drawn before any floor plan existed. It shows families, children, couples, and individuals sharing a courtyard with water, trees, and light. It is not a technical document. It is a promise about what the building is for.
設計ビジョン — early design vision sketch. Families, children, and residents sharing the courtyard. Drawn before any floor plan.
User Experience in Space
This project is about more than floor plans. It is about the sequence of moments a resident experiences: arriving home, passing a shared terrace, noticing an event on the courtyard, deciding whether to linger.
Spatial journey — from private to shared
Rendered view — shared terrace as a social catalyst
Extending the Experience Through Digital Interaction
The building creates the conditions for connection. The digital platform helps residents discover those conditions, especially when they are new to the building and do not yet know who or what is nearby.
Digital platform — concept overview
Concept & Features
The platform is built around one insight: the hardest moment is the first one. New residents do not yet know where to go, what is available, or who to meet. The app makes the shared building legible and easy to engage with.
User Journey
A new resident arrives with no social connections. The app becomes their first interface with the community — before they have met a single neighbour.
End-to-end user journey — from arrival to belonging
Wireframes
Low-fidelity wireframes focused on simplicity, spatial clarity, and reducing discovery friction. The interface always keeps the building context visible.
Home feed — events and spaces at a glance
Events — discover what is happening today
Booking — reserve a shared room in two taps
Community — neighbour profiles and shared interests
Outcome
Hyggehäuser demonstrates that architecture and interaction design can work together to shape belonging. The building gives form to community; the platform makes it discoverable.
Reflection
This project shifted how I think about design. I began with a spatial question — how do you build a community? — and ended with interaction design questions: What is the first thing someone sees? Where do they get stuck? What makes them return? Architecture taught me systems thinking and spatial empathy. I want to apply those skills across physical and digital experiences, shaping environments that feel alive and welcoming.
The long-term ambition of Hyggehäuser goes beyond this single building. The ultimate goal is cooperative housing — a model where future residents are involved in the design process itself, helping shape the environment they will live in. In Denmark this exists as a formal cooperative structure. In Japan it remains rare. Bringing that model to Fushimi Ward — and eventually beyond — is what this project points toward.
That vision of participatory, human-centred design is what led me from architecture toward interaction design. If you can involve people in designing their physical home, why not their digital one? Why not every environment they inhabit?