Living in a place where it snows so much that drifts cover your windows and doors can be challenging, to say the least. All the shoveling required to create paths to and from entrances can be arduous and exhausting, not to mention the psychological fallout of feeling trapped inside your home, with snow obscuring all views of your surroundings. In the United States, the conventional gabled silhouette of a house firmly anchored to the ground seems to be so ingrained in the cultural consciousness, it?s become relatively rare to see residential architecture that?s more appropriately tailored to regional weather conditions.

But other nations, like Japan, offer examples of simple ways in which we could adapt these architectural typologies to create homes that are both unique and well-suited to their respective environments.
The “One Year Project,” a vacation home at the foot of Mount Bandai in Fukushima, Japan, gets around the problem of high snow drifts with the help of stilts. Designed by the firm Life Style Koubou Workshop, the home has a treehouse-like feel, clad in narrow strips of cedar and lifted high above ground level on slim, angled white columns. When the snow gets high, these minimalist supports seem to disappear, making the home look like it?s floating on air.

The architects separated the residence into two main volumes: a “wet” area and a “dry” one. One contains the open living space and bedrooms (which don?t require plumbing)...