Location: Teshima, Kagawa, Japan

Design Team: Tsubame Architects

Area: 484.64 m²

Year: 2026

Photography: Yasuaki Morinaka

Design Features: Hotel SHU stands in the Ieura settlement on Teshima, a short distance from the port. Rather than concentrating its 12 rooms in a single building, Tsubame Architects divides 484.64 m² of accommodation among four two-storey timber houses. Narrow lanes remain around the perimeter, while the buildings enclose a shared courtyard. Their scale follows the houses and storehouses of the village, allowing a stay to feel closer to living on Teshima than observing it from an enclosed hotel.

The plan grows from Ieura's ambiguous relationship between public and private space. Local lanes, often only one or two metres wide, can feel almost private between earthen walls, then suddenly open onto an exposed garden. Hotel SHU carries this condition into the site: rooms are entered from the outer lanes, while gaps between the four houses lead towards the courtyard. A semi-outdoor earthen passage links lane and garden, and the shared living room opens broadly to both street and courtyard, shifting the more public realm towards the centre.

All four buildings use timber construction, but their roofs, openings, earthen thresholds and terraces respond differently to orientation. Black cedar cladding, tiled roofs, galvanised steel and deep eaves continue the dark silhouette of nearby homes. Inside, cedar floors, white plaster, rammed-earth surfaces and exposed timber establish a warmer scale. In several ground-floor rooms, bittern from the surrounding sea and crushed Teshima stone are mixed into the earthen floor, bringing the island's geology and working knowledge into direct physical contact.

The 12 rooms are deliberately varied. Dining bays facing the courtyard, window seats, tatami areas, changing ceiling heights, small gardens and framed views of tiled roofs give each room a different relationship with the settlement. A shared living room and kitchen in the north building form the social centre, furnished with pieces and pendant lights by Sander Wassink. Passages, outdoor benches and upper terraces extend eating, resting and chance encounters beyond the guestrooms.

The courtyard is not a finished landscape imposed on the island. FOLK collected plants shared from residents' gardens; paving and benches reuse Teshima stone saved from demolished houses and abandoned plots; bamboo supplied by islanders forms traditional underground drainage, and a hand pump recalls the well as an everyday meeting place. Hotel SHU turns a brief visit into a slower relationship, allowing travellers to encounter Teshima through lanes, plants, shared meals and the quiet of night as well as through its celebrated art destinations.

Design Team: Tsubame Architects was founded in Tokyo in 2013 by Takuto Sando, Motoo Chiba and Himari Saikawa. Sando studied at Tokyo Institute of Technology and worked with ELEMENTAL in Chile. Chiba studied at Tokyo Institute of Technology and ETH Zurich before working with Jonathan Woolf Architects in London. Saikawa studied at Ochanomizu University, Waseda Art and Architecture School and Y-GSA, and previously worked at CAt.

The practice is organised around two connected divisions. The Studio undertakes architectural and spatial design, while the Lab researches the frameworks that make projects possible, develops materials and considers how buildings can be activated and nurtured after completion. Projects begin by defining with clients what kind of space should be made in a particular place and moment, then move repeatedly between research, design and use.

Its work ranges across housing, retail, civic facilities, workplaces, welfare architecture, shared space, renovation and urban initiatives. Tsubame Architects is particularly interested in how buildings can support small enterprises, collective action and changing patterns of life, treating occupation after completion as an ongoing part of design.

The practice has received the JIA Young Architect Award, the top General Category and Young Architect prizes at the Tokyo Architecture Awards, an AIJ Selected Architectural Designs Young Architects Award and a Good Design Best 100 recognition for BONUS TRACK. Hotel SHU was led by Motoo Chiba, Himari Saikawa, Takuto Sando and Shogo Hayama.