SHIMA-YADO

Gogoshima is an island about 15 minutes by ferry from Takahama Port in Matsuyama. Long known as a destination for day trips, it was the focus of a project to make it an island where people stay and enjoy their time, through a newly built workation (work + vacation) hub and the conversion of vacant houses into private guesthouses, carried out in parallel. This guesthouse is one of the first two that the client took on: old houses renovated and run as guesthouses.

It sits atop a small hill, a five-minute walk through narrow alleys from Yura Port. An ordinary wooden house built in the postwar years, this single-story home of about 50 square meters, some 60 years old, had long stood empty. It was badly deteriorated throughout: the beams and columns had weakened, and water infiltration had caused severe decay in parts of the roof and exterior walls. Naturally, the walls had no insulation either. We first secured the building's basic performance through structural reinforcement and insulation, and then substantially upgraded the interior and facilities so that it could command a proper price as an inn.

Because several guesthouses were being planned on the same island at the same time, we gave each one a clear target and a distinct design identity, drawing on its own characteristics, so that they would not compete for the same guests. Quiet, set slightly away from the port, and small in scale, this inn was conceived as a hideaway for couples and small families, and its theme color is indigo, a color long familiar in Japanese daily life. The walls of the tatami room and the living room are finished in indigo plaster from floor to ceiling, and indigo wood-grain tiles are used for the floors, wrapping the entire space in deep indigo.

The plan keeps the traditional four-room layout intact, in which a nearly square floor is divided into four by a cross of walls, while unnecessary partitions were removed and the rooms are gently connected by patterned-glass doors and movable screens. The entrance's earthen-floored area, one step down, adjoins both the living room, with its large window looking out to the sea, and a compact, functional dining kitchen; between them lies a bedroom with two beds and a glass-enclosed bathroom. Original features such as the tokonoma alcove, the built-in writing desk, and the carved transoms were restored and kept. Plastered walls and the texture of solid wood sit comfortably with the old framework, while the stainless-steel kitchen, the glass-enclosed bathroom, and modern light fixtures set up a contrast between old and new. We finished some parts ourselves: the painted walls of the dining kitchen, the doors around the entrance, and part of the plasterwork in the bathroom.

Since opening, helped by the client's attentive and caring operation, the inn has remained popular even as more guesthouses have appeared on the island, and it reportedly continues to be booked for nearly all of the 180 days per year permitted for private lodging. Not a so-called kominka, a traditional old Japanese house, but simply an old house of the kind found anywhere. Even in such vacant houses, which keep increasing across Japan, a great deal of potential still lies dormant. To have been involved here while feeling that firsthand has become one of our assets.