Restaurant on Teshima

In the middle of a small village, a meeting point for local people and vis-itors has been created about an old, unoccupied house. The guest room opens on to a covered veranda and the outdoor realm. A curved, flowing roof unites parts of the external area into what resembles a traditional theatre laid out about a stage beneath old trees. The construction of the roof consists of simple, locally available materials. The covering is formed with fire-charred cedar boards of the kind traditionally used on the island as wall cladding. Fixed only at the upper ends with cable ties, these shingles flap in the wind, offering virtually no resistance to it. As a result, it was possible to design the entire load-bearing structure in an extremely lightweight form. The cedar boards are laid on steel reinforcing rods, which are fixed by wire loops to a grid of common water pipes.