GUEST HOUSE YULLAT

Gogoshima is an outlying 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.

Standing just thirty seconds' walk from Yura Port, it is a single-story wooden house more than 50 years old, with a floor area of just under 100 square meters. In contrast to SHIMA-YADO, an inn for couples quietly savoring island time, this one was imagined as a place for groups of four to eight to have a lively, fun time together, and we aimed for a space full of playfulness and a sense of the extraordinary that only an inn away from home can offer, something not found in the houses we live in every day.

At first, we planned a conventional renovation, putting up ordinary ceilings and keeping some of the earthen walls. What changed our course dramatically was a sudden downpour that struck while the roof was being repaired. The earthen walls inside melted away in the rain, and when we saw the timber frame laid bare, we decided: "Let's show this just as it is." It is not an orthodox post-and-beam frame like those of a traditional kominka or the work of master temple carpenters, but a structure that looks as if a local carpenter had improvised it on the spot, relying on experience. Yet we felt that the interest of this timberwork, in which the hands and thinking of an anonymous craftsman can be vividly read, would give the inn a character found nowhere else.

Apart from places that needed to be separated for functional or visual reasons, such as the bathroom and toilets, almost all of the original partition walls were removed. Where new divisions were needed, we used curtains, glass, and other elements that do not fully close off the space, creating transparent, ambiguous boundaries. The aim was to bring the beauty and interest of the exposed structure to the fore in as pure a form as possible. The underside of the roof, rising to 3.5 meters below the ridge, was lined with insulation from the inside and finished with linden plywood.

Not only the columns and beams but also finish members such as nageshi (decorative horizontal strips) and kamoi (door headers) were all kept unless severely deteriorated. We modeled every piece, down to the secondary members, in 3D to study them, and worked out the details through continual dialogue with the builders on site. We would have liked to keep the bamboo lath beneath the earthen walls as well, but it was too deteriorated to remain anywhere within reach. We kept only the part above the tokonoma alcove in the tatami room, carefully peeling away the clinging earth by hand and leaving it in place.

In the large earthen-floored dining kitchen and lounge, set one step down, stands a ping-pong table that doubles as the dining table, an idea of the client's. In the relaxation room, furnished with beanbag cushions, the entire floor is glass, and indirect lighting set beneath the sleepers lights up the timberwork under the floor, turning it into a playful space like a floor of light.

The name of the inn was given by the client, combining the place name Yura with a sound that evokes dropping by the island casually, on a whim. Since opening, it has maintained high occupancy even as competing lodgings have multiplied on the island, and it is said that bookings from groups of young people and families fill up early, especially for summer vacation and long holidays.