Located along a shopping street in Sanjō, Niigata, this small baked-goods shop occupies a compact two-story building with a total floor area of just 21.8 m². On the ground floor, baked treats are displayed alongside an eight-seat counter where the shop can also operate as a café. Upstairs, a fully equipped kitchen is arranged to produce around 20 varieties of baked goods each day on a rotating menu. Given the shop’s modest scale, the design focuses on the sense of proximity between the owner, customers, and the pastries themselves. Circulation, fixture dimensions, and sightlines were refined down to the millimeter to create an experience that feels both intimate and comfortable. To highlight the character of the shop’s baked goods—infused with “this and that (aretosore),” as suggested by its name—the interior palette was intentionally kept minimal, forming a calm and cohesive backdrop. With a restrained material composition, the space allows the pastries to take center stage. The stairwell, finished in a silver tone that appears to float, draws daylight down to the shop below, creating a sense of openness within its compact interior. At the top of the stairs, a small window offers a glimpse into the kitchen, serving as a subtle device that sparks curiosity for everyone who visits.
Bakeshop @ Sanjo, Niigata Design: Yu Yamada, Mami Umayahara, Suzu Shimabukuro /SNARK Inc. Construction: Chuo Tochi Inc. Steel products: gambit Total area: 21.8㎡ Completion: Oct. 2025 Photo: Ippei Shinzawa
This project is a renovation of a traditional two-story wooden house—approximately 230 square meters in size—located in Gosen City, Niigata Prefecture. Originally home to three generations, the house is now occupied by the client and their son. The goal was to create a more compact living environment suited to a two-person household. The renovation focused on approximately half of the ground floor—an area large enough to accommodate daily life—and was enclosed with insulation for improved energy efficiency. On the opposite side of the central hallway lie a guest room and Buddhist altar room with a spacious engawa. It is a calm and pleasant space, where views of the garden can be enjoyed through open shoji screens and sliding doors in spring and autumn. To allow the house to be used more flexibly across the seasons, large sliding partitions were installed to separate the renovated and unrenovated areas. Finishes such as the floorboards, tiles, and other materials were carefully selected to complement the existing decorative elements—such as feature windows, coffered ceilings, and amber-toned floorboards—creating a balance of contrast and harmony so that the renovated area feels integrated with the overall structure. Amid the growing number of similar houses affected by population decline and an aging society in rural Japan, this project may offer one possible approach to reimagining traditional homes for contemporary life.
Residence @ Gosen, Niigata Design: Shota Kaneko /SNARK Inc. Construction: Daiwa Homes Total area: 239.32㎡ (1F/185.49㎡ 2F/53.83㎡) Completion: Nov. 2024 Photo: Ippei Shinzawa
Located in Sanjo, Niigata Prefecture, this gallery is a showcase of traditional skills from the Tsubame and Sanjo area of Niigata Prefecture, known as one of Japan’s leading manufacturing towns. The gallery is also used as a departure and arrival point for craft manufacturing tours offered by the client, such as a hands-on experience of making kitchen knives and iron frying pans while learning directly from craftspeople, and a cycle tour of the factories and townscape by e-bike. Part of an 85-year-old storehouse that was once used as a distribution warehouse for tabi (split-toed socks) and designated as a cultural asset by the city was renovated as an exhibition space. The display stand is composed entirely of wooden boxes and scaffolding boards left in the warehouse, expressing the historical linkage behind the technology. The entire building, which is over 900 square meters in size, is planned to become a complex facility with lodging to convey the inheritance of Tsubame and Sanjo’s technology in the future.
Gallery @ Sanjo, Niigata Client: KRaft Inc. Design: Yu Yamada /SNARK Inc. Construction: Chuo Tochi Inc. + echiwoarchi Direction: Sayaka Sakai Total area: 79.32m² Completion: Nov. 2024 Photo: Hajime Morishita
To ensure privacy within the shared program, the living areas for both generations are sectionally offset. The first-floor parents’ living area is designed as a single-story wing, lending an intimate scale to the southern streetscape. The second floor features an open, circular plan centered around a core, where daily life unfolds against a panoramic backdrop of the surrounding rice fields. Responding to the orderly patterns of the rural landscape, the symmetrical elevation is accented by a protruding volume on the second floor, which serves as a porch roof for the garden entrance below. The house is a synthesis of modest, thoughtful interventions that engage deeply with its regional context.Located in Sanjo, Niigata, this wooden two-generation residence responds to the distinct environmental demands of Japan’s snow country. In this region, where snow-melting pipes line the streets and carports are a prerequisite for daily life, the design embraces the carport as an integral part of the site’s architecture. The entrance is conceived as a high-volume atrium that rises above the carport roof, leveraging elevated windows to secure ample natural light and ventilation. This atrium acts as a climatic device: in winter, it draws in solar-heated air, while in summer, it brings in air cooled by the shade of the carport. This natural cycle is facilitated by internal openings in the second-floor washroom and louvers in the stairwell that lead to a rooftop skylight.
Residence: @ Sanjyo, Niigata Design: Yu Yamada, Mako Shimanuki /SNARK Inc. Construction: Nakashin House Total area: 148.76㎡ (1F/84.46㎡ 2F/64.3㎡) Completion: Aug.2022 Photo: Ippei Shinzawa
Located in Nagoya, this showroom for CREATORE with PLUS serves as a strategic hub for reimagining modern work environments. As the boundaries between the office and remote work continue to blur, the design adopts the concept of Work in Life, reconfiguring the office building as a continuous sequence of diverse, lived-in environments.While the primary function is to showcase commercial products, the design prioritizes a versatile exhibition space where shifting viewpoints and reconfigurable layouts mirror the fluidity of contemporary work styles. The spatial composition integrates varying scales—ranging from intimate residential settings to more expansive, urban-inspired zones—where furniture, objects, and people converge. Through a series of large, intentional openings and interconnected pathways, these distinct areas coalesce into a singular, cohesive interior landscape.
Showroom @ Marunouchi, Nagoya Client: PLUS CORPORATION Design: Rei Oshima, Sunao Koase, Yu Yamada, Mako Shimanuki /SNARK Inc. Construction: SPD meiji Furniture: Roccadia design and works, MACRI Steel Product: gambit Display: TOSHIKI STUDIO, KIAN Floor area: 989.09㎡ Completion: Jan. 2022 Photo: Daisuke Shima /ad hoc
In response to the company’s request to provide a place where staff can work comfortably and spend time in a friendly atmosphere, we stripped off the finishes except for the testing rooms to show the architectural frame, and actively added materials to create the atmosphere. At the same time, we proceeded with the graphic design of the logo and signage. The logo was made in three dimensions and designed to look different depending on the angle of view. The logo and signage have a strong presence, yet they are in harmony with the new interior design.YUKASHIKADO is a company that provides nutritional improvement services tailored to an individual’s constitution and nutritional balance. We designed the company’s newly launched in-house testing center and manufacturing factory, YUKASHIKADO FACTORY.
Factory @ Matsumoto, Nagano Client: YUKASHIKADO Inc. Design: Rei Oshima /SNARK Inc. Art director: Atsushi Ishiguro /OUWN Project management /Design direction: Masayuki Sakurai, Yohei Yamaguchi /TRAIL HEADS Construction: Total Project, Soujitsu Facilities Inc. Total area: 1488.49㎡ (1F/1032.30㎡ 2F/456.19㎡) Completion: Apr.2021 Photo: Ippei Shinzawa
