villa nagiso: a place of quiet persistence
Villa Nagiso by studio OTAA unfolds in a corner of Japan‘s Nagano Prefecture where the forest presses close and the past is preserved with the wood. In Nagiso, a town scarcely known even among Japanese people, the terrain speaks louder than the built environment. Dense forests of Kiso hinoki — a prized cypress native to the region — have shaped the spirit of local craft, from woodworking to hinokasa hat-making. For OTAA, this landscape of memory and material offers a way to imagine architecture’s role in a shrinking, aging Japan.
The place is born from a decision not just to build, but to stay. As rural towns across Japan face decline, Nagiso stands as a mirror to the nation’s future. Rather than retreat from this reality, OTAA embraced it — purchasing land and existing structures, then methodically restoring them into a hotel for rent. This act of embedding into the local context reframed architecture as an ongoing negotiation with community, time, and place.
images © Takashi Uemura
Light, Framed in Wood
OTAA’s Villa Nagiso opens itself first to the landscape, prioritizing the tea fields and mountain ridges that roll beyond its walls. The original fixed sashes were replaced with new wooden frames, a gesture both practical and poetic. Within the former timber hut, a once dark atrium space was painted silver, shifting the atmosphere from rustic to elemental without erasing the memory of the building’s original form.
The architects ground the home’s interiors with a material that could only belong to this region. In collaboration with Katsuno Lumber, a local forestry company, OTAA developed a flooring board made from the bark of Kiso hinoki trees. Where traditional tatami mats once lay, this richly textured material now covers the floor — a luxurious reimagining of what is typically discarded, and a reaffirmation of the possibilities embedded within local resources.
contemporary sensitivity arrives to a remote town in Nagano Prefecture
otaa celebrates Craft as a Daily Ritual
With its Villa Nagiso, OTAA extends the act of building beyond what can be seen. During construction, the architects invited fragrance designer Megumi Fukatsu to work with students on distilling the scent of Kiso hinoki into an original aroma for the space. This sensory layer, ephemeral yet grounding, weaves fragrance into the architecture itself, reminding visitors that memory is built as much through atmosphere as through form.
Craftsmanship is carried into the smallest details. Even the cups used at the hotel were created using the Nagiso roroku technique, a local lacquer craft. Rather than outsourcing these elements, OTAA incorporated DIY methods and hands-on workshops, allowing architecture to emerge organically from a series of small, deliberate acts rather than a single overarching plan.
OTAA reclaims an aging structure to create a quietly transformative hotel
The project reflects an understanding that the future may not be sculpted by grand gestures, but by a cumulative layering of humble efforts. Each renovation choice, each handmade object, each collaborative workshop feeds into an ecosystem of place-specific creativity. In this way, the project becomes less a hotel and more a quiet proposal for how architecture might evolve in a world where permanence is no longer the norm.
OTAA does not attempt to escape the realities of rural decline, nor does it romanticize them. Instead, it suggests that in working carefully with what is already present — wood, fragrance, craft, memory — new forms of permanence can be made. Through its modest scale and deeply rooted approach, the project offers a reminder: sometimes architecture’s most enduring impact lies not in what it builds, but in how it chooses to belong.
the building opens onto the surrounding tea fields and mountain landscape
custom handmade cups are created with the Nagiso Roroku lacquer technique
