Location: Tatsugo, Japan

Design Team: Furuya Design Architect Office

Area: 146.52 m²

Year: 2024

Photography: Koji Fujii / TOREAL 

Design Features: SANU 2nd Home MON Amami Oshima stands on Akaogi Bay in Tatsugo, Kagoshima. Furuya Design Architect Office converted an existing timber house into accommodation for five guests. The setting is more layered than an unobstructed sea view: coral-stone walls, weathered akagi trees and dense bilou palms occupy the foreground, and the renovated house becomes a gate into this established subtropical landscape.

A new timber outer wall gives the roadside elevation depth. It refreshes the facade while retaining the existing storm shutters and aluminium window frames, limiting demolition as the envelope performance is improved. Vertical boards echo the fibrous palm trunks, and the building is broken into smaller fragments by shadows and carefully placed openings rather than presented as a single object in the garden.

The interior is organised along a central axis directed toward the bay. Removing the former ceiling creates a tall living and dining room that exposes the roof structure, while bedrooms and wet areas occupy the two sides. The attic becomes an elevated lookout above the road and tree canopy, and the large void keeps the upper vantage point connected to the shared rooms below.

Openings are calibrated for particular views rather than simply made as large as possible. Horizontal windows crop the horizon, full-height doors extend the living area onto the timber deck, and smaller side windows bring trunks, leaves and garden light into bedrooms and passages. These frames continually adjust the guest's distance from sea, garden and vegetation while giving the different rooms a coherent scale.

The landscape strategy retains the existing trees and adds subtropical species with a local botanical garden, including plumeria, fukugi, hibiscus, bougainvillea and umbrella tree. Nature is not held at the edge of the site: planting approaches the walls, crosses sightlines and changes the interior light. MON is ultimately shaped through reuse, a new timber skin and precise apertures, with the bay revealed through layers of leaves.

Design Team: Furuya Design Architect Office was founded by Shunichi Furuya in 2009. Furuya studied architecture at Meiji University and completed a master's course at Waseda University before working with IDÉE and Urban Design System. He established Midori no Kukan Kousakusho in 2022 and currently teaches as a visiting professor at Kyoto University of the Arts and a part-time lecturer at Meiji University.

The practice works across architecture, interiors and landscape, often beginning with existing settings, planting and daily use. MON was designed by Shunichi Furuya, Kayoko Toyoshima and Kozo Mozuna, with SANU leading brand direction, planning and project management. The renovation combines hospitality durability with careful reuse.