- Light Shaft -

This architecture is an attempt to design a new relationship between viewing, photography, and the landscape of the town.

Situated on a narrow riverside site, four volumes are arranged so that each stands independently, yet resonates with the others.

Half of the building serves as a studio and office space, while the other half opens to the public as a shop.

The structure is composed like a photographic set, with a simple rigid frame construction overlaid by background-like elements.

In this way, place itself emerges as a kind of frame.

The most important themes in this project were "walking" and "seeing."

The circulation through the site is not merely a path, but a designed trajectory of the gaze.

As one moves toward the studio, they repeatedly pause at points where the horizontal line of the river intersects with the vertical axis of the town.

Instead of ascending the stairs in a straightforward way, different views are introduced at each landing, as if the granularity of light itself changes.

This studio is both a device for taking photographs and a device that frames the landscape like a photograph.

The space facing the street through a glass façade serves as public infrastructure, and as one proceeds deeper inside, it gradually connects to the quiet landscape of Akitsu.

The atrium embedded within the building acts as a second façade.

It is a place layered with landscape, light, and space-a kind of margin-and plays the role of a prologue in the overall composition.

Studio and shop, street and river, light and material, town and panorama-

All of these are composed not through contrast, but through a relationship of being in-between.

This building is an attempt to make both capturing the town and being captured by the town possible at the same time.