Arrival is choreographed as a gradual rotation. Guests step onto a structured path that draws them past the pool’s stillness and into the turning plan. As they move, the pavilions reveal themselves in sequence, each volume subtly lifting with the hill so the architecture feels carried by the terrain rather than imposed upon it. Residents arrive differently, descending into a sunken parking court and reemerging from the thickness of the earth. From this grounded entry, the roofline’s round aperture frames sky and landscape, marking a quiet threshold—deliberate, sheltered, unmistakably of the island.
Togetherness and solitude are balanced through individuated pavilions, each scaled to a ritual and a view. Bedrooms frame canopy and ridge, holding light and privacy at the perimeter. The spa pavilion—sauna, bath, and cold plunge—turns toward the ocean horizon, setting heat and water against a calm line. At the center, kitchen, dining, and living open to the courtyard garden, where daily life gathers in shelter. Circulation becomes a quiet promenade beneath the continuous roof, tracking light from morning blue to dusk.
Craft anchors the house to place. A larch timber structure with exposed joinery brings warmth and precision; the same wood forms a shingled skin to shed rain with expressed joints. Rammed earth walls, compacted from local soil, make geology legible as strata. Copper wraps the roof—bright at first, then oxidizing with sun, salt air, and rain—its patina indexing weather and time on Yakushima.
Client: Not A Hotel
Program: House
Area: 295 m² / 3175 sf
Status: Competition Entry
Services: Architecture, Interiors
Collaborators: Taylor Halamka
Visualization: LABS.JPG
