Courtyard No. 7

A contemporary arts foundation housed within a converted machiya on a quiet lane in the Nishiki district of Kyoto. The project transforms a disused merchant house into a small exhibition and residency space organized around a central contemplative courtyard.

Client context

A private foundation supporting ceramics and textile arts commissioned the space as a venue for intimate exhibitions, artist residencies, and public programming. The brief asked for a sequence of spaces that could host work, conversation, and quiet contemplation simultaneously.

The challenge

The machiya structure required careful structural reinforcement while preserving its characteristic timber frame and street-facing lattice facade. Japanese heritage guidelines governed interventions visible from the public realm, requiring close collaboration with a local conservation specialist.

The concept

The courtyard is the organizing principle. All rooms face it. Exhibition spaces open onto the garden through full-height sliding timber screens; the residency rooms above look down through it. New interventions are distinguished from original fabric through material — raw clay plaster versus the original pine — without rupturing the spatial continuity.

Materials

Original Pine — Preserved and cleaned structural timber frame throughout.
Raw Clay Plaster — Contemporary intervention surfaces in unpigmented clay plaster.
Washi Paper — Used for interior shoji screens and light diffusers.
Shou Sugi Ban — Charred cedar for new external cladding elements.

“The space holds silence well. Artists arrive and quickly understand that it asks something of them — which is exactly what we hoped for.”

— Foundation Director, Kyoto 2025 (Demonstration content)