Weekend Cabin: Mountain Research

Inspiration struck Setsumasa Kobayashi as he looked out over a sea of tents at a Phish concert in Maine in the early 2000s. The Japanese clothing designer and entrepreneur had long been enamored not just with making things, but also investigating what it meant to make them, a philosophy suggested by including “…Research” in the name of each season’s collection. And as he took in the sight of 50,000-plus fans housed in basic pop-ups, Kobayashi had a vision for his parcel of land in the Chichibu Mountains: a simple shelter that was something more than a tent, something less than a cabin.

To pull it into form, he turned to his friend, architect Shin Ohori, who laid out a series of unadorned platforms built around a venerable North Face base camp tent, which served for years as sleeping quarters for Kobayashi and his wife. Since then, the tent has been replaced by a wood and plexiglass dome (the better to take in the views),