YAWN YARD Kouri Island / Jo Nagasaka + Schemata Architects

On Kouri Island, Okinawa, we designed a place for visitors to relax and enjoy a beautiful sea view. It consists of freestanding villas for families and groups of several people, all designed to allow guests to stay in privacy without worrying about the noise of adjoining guests. The premises are divided into two areas: one is a long, narrow site along the road, with an undulating topography; the other is a trapezoidal site, with an elevation difference. The plan was to build a series of villas on these narrow and distorted sites, but repeating buildings of the same shape there seemed difficult. Considering the inefficiency of making different plans for the individual buildings, we developed a more efficient design method using an inverted V-shaped unit combining two standardized plans.