Shigeru Ban designs meditation retreat overlooking Awaji Island mountains

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban has designed a wooden meditation retreat named Zenbo Seinei, which is nearing completion on a verdant site on the Awaji Island in Japan.

Slated to open in spring, Zenbo Seinei will take the form of a long and slender wooden structure elevated on one side by steel columns.

It is being designed by Ban for Japanese company Pasona Group, which oversees a number of facilities on Awaji Island in Japan's Seto Inland Sea.

The retreat will focus on healthy food and mindfulness and is aimed at tourists who want to escape from cities to a natural environment.

Retreat will allow visitors to "experience zazen"

Ban's elongated building is now under construction on a leafy spot in the northern part of the island.

Once complete, it will measure 90 metres in length and 7.2 metres in width. It will also feature a 100-meter-long wooden deck, designed as an open-air platform for zazen, a form of sitting meditation.

Shigeru Ban has designed a wooden meditation retreat for Awaji Island

"We planned an accommodation facility where you can experience zazen on a small site with abundant nature on Awaji Island," explained Shigeru Ban Architects.

Pasona Group said it has been developed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which led "to major shifts in people's attitudes and values towards life and work".

"Amidst this, there has been a growing interest in opportunities to reassess one's own contentment in environments rich in nature, and in lifestyles that promote physical and mental well-being," the company added.

Restaurant forms part of design

Alongside the meditation spaces, Zenbo Seinei will contain guest accommodation and a restaurant serving dishes made from local vegetables as well as foods enjoyed by Buddhist monks.

On the surrounding 3,000-square-metre site, Ban is also designing an open-air bath and a cafe with a series of wooden huts for use in the future.

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Ban founded Shigeru Ban Architects in Tokyo in 1985. He was named the winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2014 and was selected as an ambassador for the EU's New European Bauhaus in 2021.

His studio also recently completed the Tainan Art Museum building in Taiwan and a boutique hotel that winds through Japanese woodland.

Other retreats featured on Dezeen include a series of cave-like brick-clad pods in China by Studio Avoid and a proposal for a boutique eco-resort in the USA by Jendretzki Design.

The visuals are courtesy of Pasona Group.

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Kompas completes tile-clad house and gallery for art collector in Japan

Architecture studio Kompas has completed a house and art gallery in Chiba, Japan, featuring a sawtooth roof and a facade clad in black tiles that are angled to create louvred openings.

Named the Nishiji Project, the residence was designed by Kompas for a real estate developer and art collector who wanted a family home that could double as his company's offices and a gallery.

Kompas has created a house and art gallery called the Nishiji Project

The site in Chiba's historic Nishifunabashi neighbourhood was owned by the client's parents and already contained their home, alongside several old warehouses and a parking area.

Kompas positioned the new building at the opposite end of the site from the existing house and orientated the plan so the living areas look onto a quiet central garden.

It is clad in black tiles

"Our first approach was to organise the entire site so that the two families' lives and the workspaces coexist comfortably, arranging site circulation and developing a sloped garden moderating the level differences between the two buildings," said Kompas.

The Nishiji Project contains garages at the centre of its ground floor, while the galleries and offices are arranged vertically across three storeys on the south side facing the main road.

The building features a sawtooth roof

The client was keen for the building to engage with the neighbourhood, so the prominent southern elevation features a public entrance that invites visitors to enter from the adjacent street.

Traditional Japanese kawara tiles clad most of the exterior and were chosen to recall an old warehouse that had occupied the site since the owner's grandparents' generation.

Its tile-clad elevations rest on a monolithic concrete base

A special version of the tiles called Kuroibushi kawara, which are blackened to resist salt damage, was used to cover the upper portion of the facades.

Most of the tiles are laid in a typical overlapping pattern, but in places where light and views are required, they are rotated outwards to form louvred openings.

There is an outdoor terrace at the centre of the building

The tile-clad elevations rest on a monolithic concrete base and extend up to the sawtooth roof, which allows consistent northern light to flood into the gallery and living spaces.

Behind the three-storey elevation facing the street, the building steps down towards the north to follow the local building code and create spaces with a more residential scale.

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The pitch and height of the sawtooth roofs vary depending on the usage and daylight requirements of the internal spaces below.

The three uppermost windows flood the large gallery with natural light, while a bedroom and the main living space below feature openings that look out towards the garden.

The dwelling is positioned at the back of a plot owned by the client's parents

An outdoor terrace at the centre of the building provides a shortcut between the living spaces and the offices. The sheltered first-floor terrace can be used as an additional exhibition space or as a play area for the children.

Several other interstitial spaces incorporated between the main rooms will allow the Nishiji Project to adapt over time, potentially providing additional galleries to house the owner's growing art collection.

The gallery is lit by the sawtooth roof. Photo is by Munemasa Takahashi

The arrangement of spaces over multiple levels and the creation of rooms with varying sizes and daylight conditions enhances the building's flexibility.

According to the architects, following Nishiji Project's completion, the owner made the decision to open the spaces to the public rather than using the building solely as a private gallery.

The private living spaces look out to the garden

"This new cluster with the kawara facade and the sawtooth roofs begins a new era in this historical site as a generous field to comfortably mix artworks, residents, and visitors," claimed Kompas.

"We hope this architecture to be the reliable base for art and culture appealing to the world, besides supporting joyful and abundant daily life like living in a museum."

The exhibition spaces are open to the public. Photo is by Munemasa Takahashi

Other homes featured on Dezeen that double as art galleries include Oeuf by Flat House in Tokyo and the Cambridge Residence in Massachusetts by Stern McCafferty Architects.

Elsewhere in Japan, Apollo Architects & Associates designed the Fleuve house for a client who wanted to combine their home with a small salon space from which to operate his business.

The photography is byVincent Hecht unless stated.

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Kengo Kuma adds mountain-shaped toilets to hiking trail overlooking Mount Fuji

Japanese architecture studio Kengo Kuma and Associates has designed a collection of peaked umbrella-shaped structures that were informed by the surrounding mountains for a rest area in Japan.

The Oath Hill Park is a rest area with toilets and an observation deck in a rural, mountainous location along a popular hiking trail on the eastern outskirts of the town of Oyama in Japan.

Oath Hill Park is located on a hiking trail and provides visitors with a place to rest and use restrooms

Kengo Kuma designed a collection of umbrella-shaped timber structures that resemble the tapering form and snowy peak of the distant Mount Fuji for the small "park."

Oath Hill Park is comprised of a sheltered observation deck beneath two adjoining umbrella canopies where hikers can rest, as well as restrooms that were positioned adjacent to the rest area.

The canopies and toilets were designed by Kengo Kuma and Associates and were informed by the peak of Mount Fuji

The two umbrella-shaped forms, used as the observation deck and for sheltered resting, were titled Eastern House. These interlock at their roof and are completely open at ground level, where they are encircled by a long curving bench.

The umbrella canopies are supported by large internal columns which, like the canopies themselves, were constructed using wooden pillars that were tied together with large iron rings.

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One of the roofs that forms part of the sheltered observation areas was wrapped in a translucent fluorine-coated membrane that reveals the timber skeleton beneath when it is illuminated.

Inside the Eastern House house structure, the wooden skeleton was left exposed to highlight the structural integrity of the building and maintain a connection with the undersides of the viewing and rest areas.

A translucent membrane clads the roof of one canopy, revealing the structural integrity when illuminated

The adjoining roof was clad in an opaque material that was similarly treated with fluorine for weatherproofing qualities.

The toilet structure has a cylindrical form and an identical opaque, peaked roof. The walls of the building were wrapped in a white render that echoes the colour of the roof that tops it, as well as the snow on Mount Fuji.

The structures were constructed using wooden pillars and iron

Elsewhere in Japan, the non-profit organisation Nippon Foundation organised Tokyo Toilet, a project that saw architects upgrade Tokyo's downtown district of Shibuya's public toilets.

As part of the project, Toyo Ito created a public toilet that is housed within three mushroom-shaped volumes, while Wonderwall referenced primitive Japanese huts by building toilets within a maze of board-marked concrete walls.

Kengo Kuma and Associates recently unveiled plans to add a contemporary, sculptural stone entrance to a gothic cathedral in France. The architecture practice also built the cedar-clad Japan National Stadium for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

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