In 1995 after the Hanshin Earthquake in Japan a local construction company wanted to find which of its buildings had survived the quake (in total 400 000 bldgs were destroyed, over 6000 killed). They found one of their oldest buildings, a 1928 wooden villa was without a scratch. 
First built in 1920 by Fujii Kouji (藤井厚二), a personal, experimental, project to build a home that was as finely tuned with the seasons and surround nature as possible, a proto-eco house before the concept even existed. Rebuilt five times to test new features until just right.
The house was built to function off grid & optimized for a comfortable summer indoor climate. All internal doors were sliding doors so ventilation could be fine tuned according to the breeze and sunlight. Small internal openings and many windows allowed for effective ventilation.
Heating is easy with a stove or brazier, but cooling is difficult. For this purpose two separate systems of cooling was built, one utilized an underground pipe that caught cool air above a nearby stream and lead it up into the house, blowing out hot stuff air into the attic...
...the other system, hidden, was used to create an air flow from the open foundations into the attic to transport excess moisture and help preserve the 100% wooden building from rot and dew. The untreated natural wood is still in perfect condition, even 92 years later.
Having studied and rejected the Western ideal of an airtight building, all these openings were manually opened or shut as weather demanded, creating a house that allowed people and nature to work together, harmoniously.
Today the home is managed, rather exclusively, as a showpiece of early ecological architecture, under the name of Chōchikukyo, 聴竹居, accepting visitors for guided tours.
