Project Name: Tremolare

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Architecture Practice: Fumihiko Sano Studio

Total Floor Area: 104 m²

Completion: 2025

Photography: Daisuke Shima / adhoc Inc.

Design Features: Descending a staircase from the street above, visitors to Tremolare find themselves transported into an entirely different world. Located in the basement of a building in Nishi-Azabu, Tokyo, this Italian restaurant was designed by Fumihiko Sano Studio, who drew their inspiration directly from the raw, cavernous quality of the existing space.

Rather than concealing the structural fabric of the underground volume, Sano embraced it. The exposed concrete, stone, and earth-like surfaces form a ceiling landscape of dramatic contrasts, high planes colliding with low angled masses, cylindrical columns interrupting jagged saw-toothed geometries. The architect describes the space as resembling a quarry or cave, and the design deliberately preserves that primal heaviness.

Against this imposing structural backdrop, Sano introduced warmth and delicacy through furniture and counters crafted in African teak. The organic grain and lightness of the natural timber reads as a counterpoint to the sheer mass of the raw concrete above, creating a dialogue between weight and lightness that defines the atmosphere of the entire restaurant. The rear wall of the counter retains the textured surface revealed when its original tiles were stripped away, an act of restraint that honours the material history of the space.

At the heart of the restaurant, an open kitchen allows diners to observe the chefs at work, the energy of cooking becoming part of the spatial experience itself. A private dining room offers a more intimate counterpoint: here, an arching ceiling and curved walls envelop guests in a sense of centrality and enclosure, forming a space that feels both protective and theatrical.

Tremolare is a masterclass in working with what already exists. By finding beauty in structural honesty and pairing raw materiality with refined craft, Fumihiko Sano Studio has created a dining space of rare character and depth.

Design Team: Founded in 2011 by architect and artist Fumihiko Sano, Tokyo-based Fumihiko Sano Studio has established itself as one of Japan's most culturally distinct design practices. Operating across architecture, interior design, product design, and installation art, the studio pursues a design philosophy rooted in the excavation and reinterpretation of regional history, material culture, and indigenous craft traditions.

Sano's formation is unconventional by contemporary standards. Before establishing the studio, he trained as a sukiya carpenter at Nakamura Souji Komuten in Kyoto, acquiring a rare first-hand command of traditional Japanese joinery, spatial proportion, and material sensibility. This tectonic grounding informs the studio's approach at every scale, from the detailing of a single counter surface to the orchestration of an entire interior volume.

The studio's work consistently interrogates the tension between cultural continuity and contemporary intervention. Rather than imposing predetermined aesthetics, each project begins with a rigorous reading of its site, its structural inheritance, and its local context. In 2016, Sano served as a Japanese Cultural Envoy, undertaking projects across sixteen countries. The studio has received recognition including the EDIDA Young Japanese Design Talent award, the iF Design Award, and nominations for the Dezeen Awards and Frame Awards.