Red Dot-winning architecture studio Kerimov Architects has unveiled Yakushima Residence, a private retreat proposed for the UNESCO World Heritage-listed island of Yakushima, off the southern coast of Kyushu, Japan. Conceived as a proposal for the renowned NOT A HOTEL brand, the project is a manifestation of the relationship between nature, architecture and human experience, creating an environment for stillness, contemplation and self-reflection, removed from the distractions of everyday life. The villa marks the studio’s first project in Japan, extending a portfolio of more than 60 award-winning projects across the world.
Known as the "Alps on the Ocean", Yakushima is characterised by ancient cedar forests, a white-sand coastline, shifting weather, and one of Japan’s most intense rainfall regimes. The nature here is intact and authentic with yakusugi cedars living here for more than a thousand years, while the largely undisturbed terrain and volatile weather make one thing unmistakable: here, people - and the structures they create - remain temporary guests of nature. This understanding became the project’s central premise. Dense vegetation, intense rainfall and typhoon-force winds were treated as forces that determined the house’s placement, orientation and spatial organisation. The architecture follows the contours of the land and disperses the programme across a constellation of smaller volumes. This fragmentation reduces the building’s perceived scale and leaves space for rock, water and vegetation to pass between its parts, allowing the house to take its place in the landscape without attempting to possess it.
The house is embedded in the Japanese aesthetic and spatial concept Ma - often translated as “gap,” “pause,” or “space between.” It is the idea that the interval between things is itself meaningful and active. Therefore the house unfolds as a constellation of individual volumes connected by courtyards, gardens and transitional spaces, giving physical form to the space.
Moving through the house becomes a form of choreography with an encircled form with meaningful transitions from one volume to another. The house deliberately avoids corridors, and every corner of the 350 sq. m. house becomes substantial - either giving a panoramic mountain view or contemplative garden experience. For example, the courtyard garden is approached, passed alongside, partially concealed and encountered again from another perspective, creating a mindful journey through the house that echoes the unfolding experience of life.
The facades draw from local Japanese timber architecture and reinterpret construction principles visible in buildings made on the island generations ago. Timber is used extensively for its availability, adaptability and connection to local craftsmanship, an important consideration on a remote island where complex construction is difficult to support.
Responding to Yakushima’s steep terrain and intense rainfall, the house is raised on piles by up to one metre, allowing water to flow naturally beneath it and minimising changes to the landscape. The roofs translate two further references into architecture: origami and falling leaves. Like folded paper, each roof plane bends, breaks and slips beneath the next, creating a continuous composition of overlapping surfaces. Seen together, the individual roofs resemble leaves falling and settling across the forest floor. Origami provides the logic of folding and intersection; leaves introduce movement, irregularity and a direct connection to Yakushima’s forest. Through these transformations, culture and craft become defining principles of the house's appearance.
As the villa is conceived as a private retreat, its emotional character was central to the design. Proportion, material and spatial rhythm work together to engage all body senses and shape the experience of the house.
"For me, architecture is not only something we see, but something we experience with the whole body and all the senses," says lead architect and bureau founder Shamsudin Kerimov. "Proportion, material, light and sound shape how we feel in a space at a subconscious level. Emotional design brings these elements together within a holistic system of spatial organisation."
At the centre of the plan, a courtyard garden forms the villa's contemplative heart. Water, stone and bonsai trees create a concentrated landscape as an extension of the house. Its stillness draws attention to fleeting details: ripples across the water, a breeze moving through leaves or a bee settling inside a flower.
Yakushima’s frequent rainfall is also treated as an active element of the architecture. Rain-fed reflecting basins guide water through the house, giving it a visual and acoustic presence. In this way, the weather continually alters the perception of the house, creating a different experience with each rainfall.
The building’s layout and framed views allow each room to change with the movement of daylight and the passing seasons. In this sense, the house becomes an instrument played by time. The proposal therefore treats architecture not as a finished image, but as the beginning of an ongoing process shaped by climate, materiality and future inhabitants. Like Yakushima's ancient cedars, whose age is visible in their surfaces and form, the villa is intended as an architecture that evolves with its surroundings, allowing materiality, weather, and time to leave their traces. Rather than preserving a fixed appearance, the building is intended to deepen its relationship with the landscape as it ages.
Within this framework, luxury takes on a different meaning. Conventional luxury is often measured through abundance - more space or rarer materials. Yet in a landscape already abundant beyond measure, architectural excess would add little. The greatest luxury the house can offer is attention. Through proportion, silence and carefully placed thresholds, the house brings easily overlooked experiences into focus. This attention continues at the smallest scale. Even a door handle is intended to express the philosophy of the building. However brief the encounter, door handles weight, temperature, texture and resistance place the character of the architecture directly in the occupant's hand. Every detail must feel considered; nothing should seem accidental or out of place.
Rather than presenting Yakushima for immediate visual consumption, the architecture is intended to slow perception and recalibrate the senses. It does not try to compete with the island's ancient forests, sudden storms or mountains rising from the ocean. Instead, it creates a setting for an immersive experience of nature, allowing the landscape to become an active part of everyday life and transforming ordinary phenomena into moments of heightened awareness.
