Immersing in the Culture Rooted in the Soil

――An interview with Yusuke Oono of DOMINO ARCHITECTS (Part 2)

 

 

In Part 1, we heard about Oono's architectural philosophy of "weaving contexts," which was shaped through his experiences with Siza, Scarpa, and noiz. In Part 2, we will trace how this philosophy has developed through his practice since becoming independent, focusing on BANKEI FARM in Hokkaido, his work "PULP FICTION (jetway)" at WHAT MUSEUM, and the landscape of the PAN Okinawa project.

Interviewer: PAN Okinawa Preparatory Office (Seiha Kurosawa, Able Zhang) / June 9, 2026

BANKEI FARM - Designing with the Vocabulary of a Farm

――Please tell us about BANKEI FARM in Hokkaido, which led to you being commissioned for the PAN Okinawa landscape project.

Oono: This was a project to create a farm operated by the confectionary maker "Utopia Agriculture" in the mountain area of Bankei, about a 20-minute drive from Sapporo Station. The chairman, who was about 70 years old at the time, was very enthusiastic about it, and almost entirely funded it with his own money, saying, "Let me do it!" (laughs). The chairman was a graduate of Sapporo Agricultural College, and in his youth, he had a bitter experience running a poultry farm called "Utopia Farm" that didn't go well. After making a big comeback with confectionery, he wanted to try again as a life's work. It was a joint project with his very capable son, who founded "BAKE" and "PRESS BUTTER SAND."

What's interesting is the system: when cattle and horses are grazed together, their hooves cultivate the hard ground, and they quickly eat the overgrown bamboo grass. Light then reaches the softened soil, buried seeds germinate, and beech and oak trees also grow. They started this grazing method as a way to rejuvenate mountains that had reached a climax forest stage, in a joint research project with Hokkaido University. The request was to create a space for cows, horses, and chickens to roam freely, and a direct sales shop where "the freshest eggs in the world" could be bought.


BANKEI FARM, designed by DOMINO ARCHITECTS. Photo by Gottingham.

 

The most difficult part was the cost. For agricultural spaces, there are established conventional construction methods, such as pipe houses and tractor sheds, and the market price clearly doesn't match the kind of architecture an architect would propose. Even the cheapest wooden warehouse cost 300,000 yen per tsubo (approx. 3.3 square meters) at the time, but I was told that a pipe house could be built for "50,000 yen per tsubo" (laughs). If we were to build the required volume as architecture, it would far exceed the budget. So, the idea was, why not do everything with pipe houses? We then incorporated traffic flow planning, snow resistance, and expandability into the design, drawing on our architectural expertise. Farmers routinely add functions to pipe houses themselves as needed, so we built a systemic detail with expandability into the frame from the start. For that, we custom-ordered the pipes. We were told, "Custom orders are expensive, it'll be 70,000 yen per tsubo" (laughs). We were worried about wooden construction at 300,000 yen per tsubo, but then they said "I'm sorry it's so expensive" at 70,000 yen per tsubo. I felt a lot of potential there.

It was a moment when I was convinced that it would be interesting to do something like ethnography: instead of installing an architectural culture onto them as an architect, I would enter their culture and fulfill the architect's role from their perspective, using their vocabulary and the building materials they typically use. I'm not good at clashing opinions and trying to sublimate them; I enjoy diving into their context, asking "How do you do it over there?", and then saying, "Okay, then I'll follow that method and plan it with my architectural expertise." When you compose a space with respect for what's already there, you can interact in a way that is necessary and sufficient for the project, without noise. What needs to be done naturally becomes clear, and the density of the details increases. I feel that when this is repeated, the overall scale takes on an atmosphere that hasn't been seen before.

――I hear the team structure was also unique.

Oono: Immediately before the competition, I teamed up with Kosuke Katano, an ecological expert, who provided many interesting papers. We also did fieldwork with a professor from Hokkaido University. By chance, the chairman's gardener was of Ainu descent. The Ainu people call mountains "hospitals," "schools," "refrigerators," and "graves." The mountains hold many meanings for them. They understand the mountains in great depth, saying things like, "It's fine to leave this plant here," or "The water source is here, so this is how the path should be built." I walked around with him and together we formulated the landscape policy.

Instead of trying to cover everything myself, I dive into the culture through the project, gaining various insights and applying my own abilities. I'm not good at clashing opinions and trying to sublimate them; I enjoy diving into their context, asking "How do you do it over there?", and then saying, "Okay, then I'll follow that method and plan it with my architectural expertise." When you compose a space with respect for what's already there, you can interact in a way that is necessary and sufficient for the project, without noise. What needs to be done naturally becomes clear, and the density of the details increases. I feel that when this is repeated, the overall scale takes on an atmosphere that hasn't been seen before.

 

"PULP FICTION (jetway)"――A Non-existent Architectural Model

――"PULP FICTION (jetway)," currently on display at the WHAT MUSEUM exhibition "Corrugated / Coral - Eight Practices to Project Architecture Afar" (*3), is a work that connects jetways in a loop. How did this come about?

Oono: I was originally interested in the space of a boarding bridge. It's an intermediate space connecting a moving airplane and a stationary airport, and it has to move with the position of the plane. It even has wheels (laughs), and I always thought, "This is strange." I wondered if, by trimming and isolating just this space, it could be used as a theatrical device for a performance that expands, contracts, and rotates. Eventually, the idea of connecting several to form a loop came to me.

We rarely make models for presentations. Our method is to edit 3D models in real-time like clay sculpting, so maquettes are too slow. Also, making a model creates another judgment for the client, who might say, "It's interesting as an object, so this is fine." This pose of having a material object that leaves no room for argument isn't very healthy. So, when I was asked to "create a work that shows new possibilities for architectural models," I decided to present a fictional, imagined model that doesn't exist in reality. There's a tautology that architectural exhibitions don't have real buildings, but I wondered if I could make that the theme (laughs). I thought that making a 1/10 model feel like a 1/1 object, and having it be autonomous as a work itself, would be our honest answer to the challenge of "the possibilities of models." It has no original, nor is it a representation of anything. It's incredibly real, yet it exists neither in the past nor the future. I was very interested in that vacuum state.


Corrugated / Coral - Eight Practices to Project Architecture Afar (WHAT MUSEUM), work by Yusuke Oono (DOMINO ARCHITECTS).

 

Also, I thought that a clearer relationship would emerge if the artist and the work existed in a one-to-one correspondence, so I made it entirely by hand, by myself. There were no blueprints or instruction manuals. There was no need to optimize the creation process for sharing, and all decisions to fix mistakes could be made in my head on the spot. By not letting anything out, I felt a sense that various things were becoming pure. This was completely the opposite of how design and architecture are created.

――It's surrealistic, or perhaps Escher-esque.

Oono: I've always been interested in the overlapping of fiction and reality since I was at noiz. The discrepancy and friction between imagined spaces and existing spaces. Beyond the bend in a corridor, the dark corner of a room - people have the ability to spontaneously complete spaces, and that energy creates narratives. Perhaps I wanted to create something like that. However, this work would never have seen the light of day without this opportunity. It wasn't driven by an intrinsic creative motivation, but rather a very loose commission work that only came into being with a client and a context.

*3 "Corrugated / Coral - Eight Practices to Project Architecture Afar"
Held at WHAT MUSEUM (Tennozu, Tokyo) from April 21 to September 13, 2026. This exhibition features new models by eight architectural firms that re-examine models as a medium for conveying concepts and fragments of thought. The title is a metaphor for a state where different times and scales coexist, represented by artificial materials (corrugated iron) and natural structures (coral reefs). The external curator is Taichi Sunayama.

 

PAN Okinawa――A Garden as a Territorial Battle

——Finally, let's talk about Okinawa. Please tell us about the landscape plan for PAN Okinawa.

Oono: This project has truly been blessed in many ways. The site is located along the coast, in an area that is a kind of intermediate state between land plants and plants creeping up from the sea. When I first surveyed it, it was like a dense jungle, with indigenous plants running rampant before felling. Seeing concrete block walls covered and encroached by weeds during fieldwork nearby, I thought, "This is what it means to consider the ecosystem in Okinawa." How much territory can we carve out and secure against this rampant onslaught? In a sense, I felt that a dynamic equilibrium would continue indefinitely.

So, considering maintenance costs, instead of clearing a large area, we decided to minimize the construction area and open up small areas like cookie-cutting through the forest, securing only those spots. The idea is that these excavated areas are loosely connected to form a garden. Each area becomes a space with slightly different environments, such as a secluded and calming spot, a shaded area, or a place with a good view of the sea.

During this process, something symbolic happened. When we entered the site for verification after initial felling, a huge limestone rock was found right in the center of the envisioned circle. It was as if the Earth itself was visible, with the limestone forming the foundation of this area having uplifted and protruded. The culture of perceiving the universe through the metaphor of stones is common in Asian gardens, and this discovery inspired a sense of possibility for "discovering the garden."

 
Landscape area of PAN Okinawa, key visual by DOMINO ARCHITECTS & veig.

 

Another characteristic is the elevation difference. Overall, the terrain is a gently sloping ramp from the building toward the cliff, with a natural gradient where moisture-loving plants grow in lowlands and drought-resistant ones in highlands. Looking closely, it had a complex shape with small undulations. In typical landscaping, construction begins after clearing the site, but we wanted to utilize existing depressions and small hills as much as possible. So, we came up with the idea of a "circle walk," creating a doughnut-shaped route with a constant height within the slope. As you walk around, the height difference with the ground changes, so a tree trunk visible on one side might reveal its leaves, or even a bird's nest, on the other side. This naturally creates areas like a tree walk.

The material used is concrete blocks. Okinawa is an island primarily made of limestone, and wherever you dig, you find limestone. Concrete, made by crushing this limestone into cement, has been widely used. This means we have a limestone rock formation on one side and a concrete walk created by crushing that limestone on the other. It's a contrast of completely different manifestations, a metamorphosis of the same material. I hope the garden will become a point of convergence where human activity, the forces of nature, and the forms pushed up by the Earth can be felt.

——How has your collaboration with veig been?

Oono: veig is a unit composed of ecologist Kosuke Katano and landscape architect Yosuke Nishio, and talking with them always sparks inspiration. For example, a single garden path. For me, as an architect, it's a cover to contain plants and a human circulation path, but for landscape architect Nishio-kun, it's about creating scenery. He says, "When you put a path in, light comes in, and you can see layers in the grass behind it." Katano-kun says, "When a path is created, some insects can't cross it, and the ecosystem divides into groups A and B, starting new movements." Since they perceive even a single path in completely different ways, it's always stimulating. The garden at the South London Gallery in London was created by Gabriel Orozco, 6a Architects, and a team of researchers/gardeners from Kew Gardens, and it means different things to each of them. It's not totalitarianism, creating one thing to say one thing, but rather a Venn diagram where each person attaches their own context. I also feel like we're able to put that admired way of creating into practice here now. 

"Care" - What Begins After Completion

——Completion is still several years away, but could you share your thoughts on the future?

Oono: I hear that plant growth in Okinawa is incredibly fast, so I see this as a valuable opportunity to observe the dynamic situation of plants growing from seedlings. Archiving these changes through video or documentation could generate various values in the future, both academically and artistically. I'm not thinking of static objects in static forms. I want to experience the project as a flow, from research to completion and even including maintenance to see how it changes.

However, if that dynamism is left unchecked, Okinawa would be in big trouble (laughs), so there must be a lot of learning involved, such as dialogue with local management companies. More than just maintenance, we believe the word "care" is important. To apply care and maintain a good state for both parties. If nothing is done, we'll be swallowed up, but we'll both take action. I think that's essential for Okinawa.

——Thank you.

(End)

Yusuke Oono

Representative of DOMINO ARCHITECTS / Member of FICCIONES / Part-time lecturer at Tokyo University of the Arts / First-class registered architect. Born in Germany in 1983. Graduated from the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, University of Tokyo, and completed a master's degree at the University of Tokyo Graduate School. After working at Carrilho da Graça Arquitectos (Lisbon) and noiz (Tokyo/Taipei), he became independent in 2016. Oono has concurrently served as a part-time lecturer at Tokyo University of the Arts since 2011 and at Tokyo University of Science since 2023.