Work
From the first talk
to the year after
How many people live in a house, and how they live, changes within ten years. Separating the walls that can move from the ones that cannot, at the start, makes the later work cheap. We design mainly in timber, for new builds and rebuilds.
Read moreNo two Kyoto machiya put their posts and beams together the same way, and the drawings are often gone. So we ask to see under the floor and inside the roof first. How far the seismic and insulation work goes is decided after that survey.
Read moreA shop spends far longer open than it does being built. We fix the route for prep and clearing up before we count the seats. Signs and fittings are measured inside the same drawings, so nothing has to find a home after the builders leave.
Read moreWe check on site that the work matches the drawings. We visit once a week and send the owner photographs and a written record. Reading the builder’s quotation line by line is part of our job, not the owner’s.
Read moreWe look at land before you buy it, and at houses you have inherited. What can be built, how the road affects it, whether it can be rebuilt at all: those come first. Sometimes the answer is that you should walk away.
Read moreStudio
Soraniwa Sekkei works out of a machiya in Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto. Two licensed architects, both of whom started out on renovation sites. The same people stay on a job from the first sketch to the handover, whether it is a new building or an old one being kept. We draw everything ourselves.
Read about the studio
Process
We meet around a model and drawings made by hand. Something you can pick up moves a conversation faster than a picture on a screen. Whatever is decided is written down and sent the same day.
See how a project runs
What we cover
New to this
About a year passes between the first email and the keys, for a house. Here is what gets decided when.
What "10% of the construction cost" actually comes to, calculated for two real-sized jobs.
Under the floor, inside the roof, and the boundary with next door. Three places that are hard to fix afterwards.
You do not need drawings. An address and a few photographs are enough to talk. Meetings are by appointment.
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