Field

Lake Shirakaba is a place where the shape of tourism changed completely. The memory of a busier past, and the quiet of today. Between the two, a plan to build a genuine highland resort in Japan has started to move. A lakeside where visitors and residents alike can spend time in their own way.

Our family spends close to two months of every summer here. The weather is kind, and in an age of brutal heat it is a dreamlike place where you can lie around outside in midsummer. A special summer, like the school holidays you remember from childhood.

Work has also begun as a member of a team called COHAN STUDIO, founded with people we worked alongside at the lake and came to share a view with. Drawn to the lake, and with an undiluted affection for its shore, we are shaping what the lakeside ought to be. Small attempts, one after another, looking together for a future that belongs to this place.

In Hanno, a forest with a history of forestry, a river and a town run into one another. Less a tourist destination than a field right next to everyday life. So the way we work here is closer to daily routine than to a project. Walk, talk, and slowly give form to what we notice.

Thinking about the future of the area, a place that is only consumed has no meaning. So we have started creating reasons for people who make things to come here. Places to gather and rooms to live in beautifully, through a new company, temono LLC.