Location: Osaka Prefecture, Japan

Design Team: ninkipen! + MuFF

Area: 275.29 m²

Year: 2026

Photography: Hiroki Kawata

Design Features: Kawara no Garan stands at the southern edge of the Kawachi Plain, below the Kongo Mountains in southeastern Osaka Prefecture. ninkipen! and MuFF add a new home to an estate already containing a main house, a reception building, a tea room and a gatehouse. Rather than treating the addition as a separate object, they work with the overlapping tiled roofs to recast the relationship between buildings and open ground. The idea of a garan refers here to the arrangement of an ensemble, not to a religious programme.

An underused garden once occupied the northern corner of the estate. Opening the new living room to the south brings this ground into a courtyard enclosed by old and new buildings. A peripheral space becomes the centre of domestic life. Shared views of the garden, sky and neighbouring eaves reconnect the separate dwellings without erasing their identities.

The long east–west site changes in level. Roofs divide and turn with the terrain while a tunnel-like entrance porch accommodates its shifts. The existing gatehouse remains the entrance to the estate; a separate access point serves the new home. Deep eaves lead toward the living room, making arrival a gradual passage beside the garden rather than a single step across a door.

A generous living-room volume opens to the courtyard through large apertures beneath deep eaves. This openness is directed inward, maintaining privacy while linking the family to the surrounding houses. Dining, cooking and play occupy connected parts of the interior. In the plan and photographs, the garden remains a visual reference between everyday activities.

Silver-toned tiles continue the material language of the estate. Scraped mortar outside, plaster inside, engineered oak flooring and cedar provide quieter surfaces at close range. Roof proportions, timber texture and garden light give the new rooms their character. Kawara no Garan preserves more than an image of an old estate: it allows the ensemble to support a new family and a renewed pattern of daily life.

Design Team: Architect Yasuo Imazu founded ninkipen! in 2005. Based in Minoh, Osaka Prefecture, the practice provides architectural and interior design, construction supervision and furniture design. Imazu completed a master’s degree in architectural engineering at Osaka University in 2001 and worked at Takeo Endo Architects until 2005. The office works across houses, shops and other building types, extending its attention from architecture to interiors and everyday objects.

MuFF was co-founded in 2005 and is based in Kobe. Shuhei Imazu has served as its representative director since 2011. The practice works on commercial, hospitality, residential and office buildings, parks and roadside stations. It assembles specialist collaborators for each project, with an emphasis on local context, dialogue and the stewardship of satoyama landscapes and resources.