Project Name: Ki no Kasa (Wood Umbrella)

Location: Izumiotsu, Osaka, Japan

Design Team: Setsuko Sakakibara Architect & Associates

Total Floor Area: 29.81 m²

Completion: March 2024

Photography: Ogawa Shigeo

Design Features: Setsuko Sakakibara Architect & Associates has completed Ki no Kasa (Wood Umbrella), a compact single-storey residence in Izumiotsu, Osaka, conceived for an owner approaching retirement who will live alone. Encompassing just 29.81 square metres of floor area, the project confronts one of architecture's most quietly urgent questions: what does a home become when the rhythms of working life recede, and time itself becomes the primary material of daily existence? The result is a dwelling of uncommon spatial ambition, one that achieves both dynamic structural presence and still, contemplative warmth within an exceptionally modest footprint.

The building is planned as a perfect square of nine tsubo, rotated at an angle relative to the plot boundary. This seemingly simple move generates four distinct outdoor spaces around the perimeter, each with its own character and orientation: an entry approach and parking area at the front, and a laundry terrace with a small garden at the rear. The rotation introduces a sense of depth and spatial generosity into an otherwise predictable suburban setting, animating the boundaries between building and site with carefully considered ambiguity.

The project's most distinctive feature is its roof structure. Douglas fir rafters measuring 38 by 180 millimetres rise in a helical arrangement, climbing from a beam soffit height of 2,350 millimetres to 3,350 millimetres. The overlapping origin and terminus of the spiral produces a continuous clerestory through which soft, diffused natural light enters the interior. The apex of the roof extends into a tubular volume that punctuates the roofline and draws additional daylight deep into the plan via a central skylight. This singular structural gesture simultaneously delivers spatial drama and intimate warmth. A loft nestled within the timber framework allows the inhabitant to experience the architecture of the roof in close proximity, enveloped in a quiet sense of shelter. The exterior is unified in a continuous skin of asphalt shingles applied across the walls, roof, and tubular volume, articulating the building as one coherent umbrella form rather than an assembly of discrete components.

Design Team: Setsuko Sakakibara Architect & Associates was established in 2009 by principal architect Setsuko Sakakibara, with its main office in Fukushima, Osaka, and a branch studio in Nagoya. A senior registered architect and member of the Japan Institute of Architects and the Osaka Association of Architects and Building Engineers, Sakakibara brings an unconventional professional trajectory to the discipline. Having graduated from the Department of Economics at Nagoya University in 1993, she subsequently gained experience at Central Japan Railway Company and arte Spatial Design Studio before founding her own atelier, a background that informs the rigorous programmatic clarity and structural honesty evident throughout her work.

The practice operates across a broad range of typologies, encompassing new residential construction, commercial and retail interiors, renovation and adaptive reuse, landscape design, and bespoke furniture. This typological breadth reflects a holistic understanding of the built environment in which spatial quality is pursued consistently from the urban scale to the level of material detail. The atelier has received numerous awards including the SD Review Asakura Prize, the JIA Kansai New Generation Award, and a 2024 Japan Space Design Award selection. Dialogue with clients and a rigorous commitment to place-specific design remain the foundational principles of the practice, with each commission treated as an opportunity to produce architecture that is both functionally precise and enduringly loved.