Location: Nishinoshima, Shimane, Japan

Design Team: Amane Architecture

Area: 69.28 m²

Year: 2024

Photography: Taro Shimokawa, norihito miyaji

Design Features: The Kunigasou Jinakachi guestroom is located on Nishinoshima in Japan's Oki Islands. Kunigasou stands above Urago Harbour, looking across the Dōzen inland sea towards volcanic uplands kept open by generations of grazing cattle and horses. Amane Architecture renovated the hotel's south-eastern Room 211, treating its 69.28 m² interior not as a room beside a view, but as a place from which the island's terrain, climate and changing light can be read.

The design begins with the window. Its horizontal frame is visually suppressed, while the bed platform is lifted roughly one metre above the original floor. Even when lying down, guests can see beyond nearby roofs and railings towards an uninterrupted horizon running from water to ridgeline. The bed, living area and semi-open-air bath consequently share the same landscape, allowing sunrise, passing clouds and boats entering the harbour to become sustained elements of the interior rather than scenery held at a distance.

Wind provides a second, less visible ordering principle. Operable windows on the north and south sides establish several paths for cross-ventilation, while rattan-screened sliding panels soften direct sun and register small movements of air. The name Jinakachi comes from a local Oki term for the wind that enters Urago Harbour and welcomes sailing vessels home after a long voyage. The renovation translates that memory into airflow, filtered light and the tactile depth of woven surfaces.

The hotel's straightforward concrete structure is retained, with a restrained set of new surfaces reorganising bedroom, living space, bath and passage. Dark timber flooring, muted walls, solid Oki cedar and slender metal details reduce the room's visual noise. Existing beams and columns remain legible beside the new joinery, so the interior neither imitates a traditional inn nor erases the accumulated age of Kunigasou. The timber stain was repeatedly tested to bring fresh cedar into harmony with the building's familiar warmth.

Jinakachi is less concerned with producing a conspicuous themed suite than with recalibrating height, distance and duration between traveller and landscape. From the bed, bath or window edge, looking becomes an everyday act extending from morning into darkness. Through limited intervention, the architecture returns sea, wind and topography to the centre of the stay, reflecting a landscape shaped jointly by geological forces and long traditions of grazing.

Design Team: Amane Architecture was founded in Tokyo by first-class architect Taro Shimokawa. Guided by an ambition to create things that are ordinary yet special, the practice works across houses, hospitality, restaurants, kindergartens and welfare facilities, alongside renovations and small public environments rooted in their local settings.

Rather than imposing emphatic forms, the studio begins with climate, material, habits of use and the realities of construction. Shimokawa is particularly interested in how new value can emerge through recombining what already exists, treating repeated prototyping, detailed design and close collaboration during construction as essential to bringing an architectural idea into everyday life.

Recent work continues to explore timber construction, regional materials and passive environmental strategies. Across the ONDPARK projects in Saga, temple renovations and hospitality spaces in the Oki Islands, wind, light, heat and human activity are made perceptible as spatial structure rather than presented as technical additions to form.

The Kunigasou Jinakachi guestroom was designed by Taro Shimokawa with project member Motoki Kawano and constructed by Yoshizaki Construction. Retaining the existing reinforced-concrete frame, the team adjusted viewing height, ventilation routes, cedar tones and furniture scale to turn one hotel room into a vantage point for understanding Nishinoshima's climate and landscape.