Project Name: House in Zenpukuji Park

Location: Suginami, Tokyo, Japan

Design Team: KIAS Ishida Architects Studio

Floor Area: 132.5 m²

Completion: July 2025

Photography: Norihito Yamauchi, Nanako Ono

Design Features: KIAS Ishida Architects Studio has completed a residence in Suginami, Tokyo, that quietly redefines the boundary between private dwelling, artistic community, and public parkland. Sited directly opposite the verdant Zenpukuji Park, the two-storey timber structure integrates a rental gallery for emerging artists on its ground floor with the owner's home above, creating a rare hybrid building that serves both its inhabitant and its neighbourhood with equal intention.

The project's most distinctive quality lies in its unconventional design sequence. Rather than beginning with structure and filling in the spaces afterward, architect Kentaro Ishida first sculpted the spatial volumes as one would approach a work of sculpture, then formed the structural system around them, and finally applied the exterior finish as a final layer. This deliberate inversion produces what the architect describes as a pleasant disjunction between space, structure, and envelope, lending the interior an organic richness that conventional construction logic rarely achieves.

Natural light is treated with choreographic precision throughout. A circular east-facing window in the living room traces arcs of morning sun across the floor as the day progresses, recalling the meditative quality of Japanese spatial tradition. A horizontal south-facing window, reminiscent of shoji screens, frames continuous views of the park canopy. Skylights punctuate the pitched roof for afternoon illumination, while a tall vertical window within the stairwell pulls light deep into the vertical circulation core.

At street level, a nine-metre bench installed along the park-facing facade extends the building's generosity outward, offering an informal social gathering place for gallery visitors and passersby alike. Completed in July 2025, the project demonstrates how a modest residential footprint of 132.5 square metres can carry genuine civic ambition.

Design Team: Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Daikanyama, Shibuya, Tokyo, KIAS Ishida Architects Studio is a licensed architectural practice registered under the Tokyo Governor's Office (Registration No. 58204). The studio operates under the leadership of Principal Kentaro Ishida alongside Partner Miyuki Kakizawa, with Project Directors Takuji Murakami and Satoshi Iiyama steering project delivery across a diverse portfolio. The senior design team is further supported by Senior Architects Hakjae Kim and Yuka Takeuchi, reinforcing the studio's capacity for work at multiple scales and typologies.

KIAS pursues an architecture grounded in spatial primacy, treating structural logic and material articulation as instruments subordinate to the lived quality of space. The practice consistently explores the productive tension between enclosure and openness, program and community, the individual dwelling and its urban context. Projects are developed through a rigorous iterative process in which spatial volumes are conceived before structural systems are resolved, a methodology that yields interiors of uncommon richness and formal precision.

With a multidisciplinary team that includes internationally registered architects, the studio brings a globally informed yet contextually sensitive design sensibility to each commission, from intimate residential work to culturally engaged public programs.