Small houses for ”RYOKAN”

This is a coastal house and ryokan project in Kamakura, the former capital of Japan, in the suburbs of Tokyo. Global tourism has a considerable impact on Tokyo and the shortage of lodging facilities is acute. Because of this situation, it is popular to simply renovate residential buildings and rent them out cheaply as guest houses, while projects of building luxury hotels with a large financial background are announced one after another. The situation surrounding lodging facilities is polarized.

This project may be neither of those. The clients are a young couple who used to live in a ninety year old Japanese house, renting it out as a side business via Airbnb. This time they moved to Kamakura and are starting out the rental business as their principal work. We designed two houses so that they can accommodate guests with great hospitality while they also live there.

The important point in this project was how and to what extent the house should be open to other people. So we decided to use the concept of “Kyakuma” or a guest room, which has always been set up in a traditional Japanese house. (“Kyakuma” is disappearing in Japan due to the declining birthrate and nuclear families.)

We created the two separated houses in accordance to the size of the neighboring houses. The main house and the the second house on the seaward side are divided by the garden in between. The exclusive space for the client couple is kept to a minimum, limiting it to the second floor of the main building, while the rest are used as guest rooms. (The first floor of the main building and the both floors of the second building are used as guest rooms.) It is also designed so that the guests go outside to access between the guest rooms. That way they can view the garden and sea in an alternating sequence.

The couple used to rent out a guest room which happened to be available in the traditional Japanese house where they used to live. However, this newly built building is maximized to offer hospitality for its guests and make it possible to earn compensation. This particular wish of the client formed this house where “Kyakuma” or guest rooms have the great importance, contrary to the current trend of houses in Japan.

This is an interior design project for a restaurant situated in the large shopping mall directly connected to Shibuya station. The compartment planned to be used is located in the very end of the restaurant floor of the building, and there were no windows, which makes this project more challenging.

The restaurant facade is created with Noren or shop curtains, made of coarse, see-through fabric originally for gardening, and they cover the entire area. It should have a good visibility from the common corridor, and protect customers from the eyes of passers-by while making sure about the spatial expanse of both the interior and exterior of the restaurant. This is why we have chosen the see-through material.

It is an Izakaya, and what is special about this place is that they offer different ways of drinking by strictly adjusting the temperature of sake according to the more than 300-year-old tradition. The owner has requested that the restaurant should keep the formality while being casual enough for female customers.

In order to fulfill the seemingly conflicting request, we used the coffered ceiling, a traditional Japanese architectural style, as a motif. We purposely created the dropped ceiling, instead of a coved ceiling traditionally associated with a high status, so the meaning has been changed.

Also, 30mm rectangular lumber made of pine trees where the sides are painted black was used so that it assimilates with the black ceiling. As a result, the lumber looks like grid frames which have lost the materiality.

Shibuya is a city for young people, which goes through constant redevelopments and changes. Under the parodied, re-designed ceiling, you see many women happily enjoying sake.

Noren:
Using Noren as the restaurant facade. Noren is a shop curtain used for traditional shops and restaurant in Japan. We used the see-through gardening fabric this time.

“CHANPON” - Regional Ramen noodle restaurant in Tokyo

This is a project for a “Chanpon” noodle restaurant near the Komazawa Olympic park. A young couple asked a former Chanpon restaurateur from Fukuoka to come to Tokyo to open a new restaurant together with them.

While the client wanted to keep the interior design as simple as possible, they had a special request to set up eaves for the waiting area - the partition between the table/chair area and the tatami area – as well as a shade for the storage and kitchen areas to add some detail. Due to the limited space available, accommodating these secondary requests was a challenge in this project.

“Chanpon”, which is well-known Japanese ramen noodle is a by-product of other foods, believed to have been created by mixing leftovers. Therefore, we decided to design the space by paying attention to the origin of this food.

The eaves, the shade, and the partition are made of colored polycarbonate resin and parachute code, which was meant to give a light impression. The simple interior is highlighted by exposing the reinforced-concrete structure which inevitably shows off the electric wiring, the joints between the tiles, and the cables, and so we decided to use the same color. What we are trying to do here is to accommodate all the by-products of the space with different materials and purposes, and make it possible for them to co-exist in the same space.

“Chanpon” is a ramen noodle originating from the island of Kyushu, which is Japan’s entry to the Asian continent, and is well-known for its liberal and generous spirit. We tried to design a restaurant just like the “Chanpon” noodle where byproducts mix freely together to create a mysterious harmony - all in the same bowl.

This is a renovation project of a side corridor-type multiple dwelling house, first sold at the end of 1970s. The original layout was for a rather small three-bed room apartment, which was typical for a condominium apartment during this period. 

The original layout was designed to optimize the economic efficiency and functionality from the developer’s point of view – taking into account the standard lifestyle of the 1970s Japan. The layout was so clear that it was obvious as to where to put certain furniture in the living room, for example. However, such an “optimized” layout somewhat forced occupants to live the standardized life of the era, which seemed to limit the way they lived, and was experienced as rather suffocating. 

Therefore, in this renovation project, we paid attention to the distribution of the living areas, and tried to liberate the space by distributing them without taking a particular lifestyle into account. 

For example, we first prepared four spaces in different sizes without pre-deciding the usage for them. 

The four spaces that don’t have pre-destined purposes do not have anything that stipulates their relationship, and so we positioned them simply, according to the sizes of the spaces, one by one from the balcony side, and positioned the bathroom, changing room, toilet/bathroom - which have clear functions - in the left space. 

The walls along the four spaces were built only to the longer side of the apartment in order to get light and ventilation. The wooden walls have made it possible for the occupants to use screws as they wish, and they have been designed to be used according to the occupants needs.

And these wooden walls can act as a symbol for each space, so we made them to be something which appeal to the space by putting high gloss acrylic painting on the surface.

As a result, the apartment becomes essentially one big space with four stand-alone wooden walls. 

We intended to create a living space which develops together with the occupants by providing flexible and undefined space that can adapt to the changes and needs of the occupants in the coming future. This is a different approach because it no longer forces occupants to use a given space in a way that a developer might have thought “optimal”.

This is a plan for a liquor storehouse which is to be built between a new residential area and a commercial strip. We focused on the incoherence and duality of the scenery and then recombined them to create an entirely new landscape.
In line with the insular shops of Road Town, we dismantled the open storehouse, made it align with the local environment and commercial activity, and made an entirely complex structure.
The periphery of the structure is an outdoor space used by warehouses and stores. Within the sequence of comings and goings, we are weaving together the coexistence of both work and town.

Home renovation for a young couple. By re-examining the previous layout, where the space was cut into small pieces, we maximized the depth and volume by creating one large space which gives more mobility to the rooms. At the same time, we have set up sliding doors which create partitions when necessary. Regarding the design, it is playful as there are red and blue colors that appear only when you close the doors. It is a stylish touch, just like colored lining of some garment.
The play of colors was extended to the electric cables, furniture, and backsides of doors. That is why the house is called “Bico”, named after the French word “bicolore” The red and blue colors in a rather simple, large space are symbolic for the newly married couple, and of the beginning of their new life together.

This unique apartment is located in the very heart of Tokyo, inside a low-rise apartment complex, one block from a major highway.

The client had been searching for a convenient location in central Tokyo and found this thirty-seven year old apartment located in the attic of the building complete with long, sloping ceilings and a raw interior.





The sloped ceilings have been converted into a skylight allowing in natural sunlight with a wonderful unobstructed view of the city. Since this apartment is to be used for accommodation purposes, we took the unique character of the apartment and added a hotel-like atmosphere.

In order to achieve harmony between the industrial attic interior and a welcoming hotel-like atmosphere, soft painting techniques that resembles traditional Japanese paper called “Washi” are used on the surface of the raw concrete walls and ceilings. This original texture is created with resin sheets that are normally used as slip-proof mats under carpets. These mats are cut to A4 size, attached to the interior walls and spray-painted. Once the sheets are removed, it appears to be the texture of traditional Japanese Washi paper.





This type of “hotel apartment” is a wonderful alternative to the existing hotel industry in central Tokyo. Plans are in place to increase these types of apartments in Tokyo with this apartment being the first test model for future projects. Due to websites like Airbnb, there has been an increase in popularity with these type of short-term apartment rentals.

During the 1980’s, Japan’s economic bubble created a host of “Pencil Buildings”. These were tall, slender structures built to utilize small plots of land in Tokyo for maximum profitability. This project will rejuvenate these already existing structures breathing in new life to old utilitarian buildings generated by the city long ago

The project is an intervention of an aged shed situated in a small port town of Hitachinaka city, Ibaraki.
The owner finally decided to demolish this rusty timeworn shed this spring. The finishing blow that determined its fate was the tsunami that devastated the area two years ago. We, who were looking for a location for a kiosk for an art event which was booked for the same timing as the demolition, decided to borrow this shed and add a bit of face-lift for its twilight days.

Using leaves collected by local students, we held an art workshop. We press-dried the leaves as you would to make dry flower, attached them to the rusted corrugated wall by magnets and spray-painted over them. When these leaves are then peeled off, the pre-existing texture of the old building becomes revealed almost as if the old memory is excavated along with it. We would then use the leaves that were peeled off as a part of a kinetic art. Leaves are placed all around the shed as if to retrace the shape of the building.

For the duration of the summer art event in this small port town which still the scar of the earthquake disaster remains, the leaves mobile that has replicated the memory of the building passively sways with the slight air movement giving a sense of coolness to this small resting kiosk like a “ Fulin ”(Japanese glass wind chime).

This is a renovation project of a nondescript apartment. Client is a painter, bought a room in an apartment built 25 years for herself to live in. The client’s request was that she wants to have a small studio that also functions as a living room.

When the preexisting wallpaper of the room was removed, the walls and ceilings made of concrete bared old dirt and repair putty surface. To use as a studio, this kind of rough finish seemed appropriate, but as a living room it seemed too dirty and stark. I decided to turn this into an advantage, to make use of this unique texture of the concrete by complementing it.

I translated the procedure used in stencil graffiti. By pasting a resin stencil on top of the concrete wall and painting white on top of it, the rough textured concrete and the newly painted white parts are intertwined.

The aging of the building is not only about becoming old. It has some very special quality that can be cherished, very similar to a favorite dress being remade. We think that the dirt accumulated is a part of a small history of this apartment

that is handed down from one owner to the other. New texture promotes a strange harmony when mixing with the old.