I assume that each and every person present here recognizes the advantage of JMA/PCPAJ, an organization that embraces diversity. As one instance in which synergies among the architecture, interior and landscape teams produced great results, I would point to the project for the Hilton Okinawa Chatan Resort as the clearest example in recent years.

I agree. We were entrusted with the design, so we took charge of the architecture, interior and landscape as a package. Anazawa-san from the Landscape Design Dept. and Yamano-san from the Interior Design Dept. were involved in the project.

This project had one big issue in particular. The client was a resort hotel located along the coast but not directly on the sea. We had to make the hotel, which was to be built on a landfill, look more like a resort. I remember that we all spent a lot of time discussing how to improve the added value of the hotel by creating a landscape that would extend beyond the boundaries of the buildings and premises.

I heard that they shared ideas by repeatedly verifying the landscape that would be visible to guests of the hotel, and that the teams were particularly active in exchanging ideas on the portion between the front entrance façade and the entrance hall.

The interior team proposed a design that involved extending the eaves of the carriage porch to the inside of the building, and the proposal was adopted. All visitors to the hotel would pass through the entrance lobby, which connects the outside to the inside. Therefore, we presented a design connecting the carriage porch eaves with the interior space so that visitors would be guided by the eaves and the ceilings to move from the carriage porch to the entrance lobby.

Initially, only the architecture team was working on the design of the eaves. But the interior team came up with the idea of connecting the eaves with the indoor ceilings, and the client was really happy with the dynamic form. This was a case where an idea of the interior team was applied to the exterior design.

The portion of the eaves, which were planned for an approach at the second floor level, doesn’t just play a very important role as an exterior element in the sequence wherein guests, looking up, enter the building. Once guests shift their gaze to the interior, the interior glamorously frames the landscape they can then see through the window, so the ceilings are regarded as a key element in the design. Between interior and exterior, there are definite differences in vision and scale, as well as in materials and construction techniques used. It is crucial to make the boundaries between architecture and interior as subtle as possible.

Exactly. My team, the interior team, aggressively proposed a design that would effortlessly connect the outdoor space with the indoor space. We collaborated with the landscape team to an even greater degree. When guests enter the entrance lobby on the second floor, they would see the sea and the sky of Okinawa spreading out before them outside the window. In order to make the landscape look even more beautiful by directing their gaze to the sea and the sky as the main features, we needed a mechanism to prevent guests from seeing anything else. We held repeated discussions with Anazawa-san to exchange ideas on how to create an overall view.

As Yamano-san said, the view from the entrance lobby must be the best. And we wanted to create a resort atmosphere with a dramatic landscape. However, if we didn’t focus their gaze, guests would see the embankment that lies below, which is detrimental to the view. To hide the embankment, we undertook a thorough investigation of the height of people’s eye level and installed a cascade that controls the downward gaze. As guests look back, what they would see through the window on the opposite side is mountains with crowded streets at the bottom. So we designed a planted mound to obscure the streets from view. We also adopted various other tricks to block out the outside world, such as building external walls in the style of gusuku or Okinawan castle walls to hide neighborhood buildings and create a landscape more typical of a resort hotel.

In order to check the view from the second floor, where the entrance would be, we actually got on a basket crane to take photographs from the planned height before the start of construction. We created cross-sectional drawings, calculated the position where visitors might stand after coming in through the entrance as well as the distance and height between that position and the landscape, and conducted in-depth simulations. We didn’t allow any compromise.

We also prepared variations of conceptual drawings and perspective drawings, and repeatedly verified how the landscape would be seen by visitors. And as we talked with the client, we realized that creating a dynamic architectural form and allowing visitors to simply see the beautiful sea of Okinawa were the two most important things. Before we reached that point, we made so many drawings.

Actually, we also prepared multiple models. In order to approach the issue from the various standpoints of architecture, interior and landscape, we made detailed models of different scales ranging from 1:200 and 1:100 to as big as 1:50 and 1:20, which we used together with computer graphics to inform our discussions.

Being able to carry out the design in-house allows us to put forward our unvarnished opinions, which is great as it allows for much faster information sharing. But more than anything, we as interior professionals find the environment at JMA/PCPAJ very advantageous because we can take part in brainstorming sessions right from the start of a project and can sometimes take initiatives. Everyone in our interior team gets motivated to really apply his or her skills.

The landscape team feels the same. Sometimes all that’s required of landscape design is just to fill in the blank spaces after the architects have decided the layout and volume. Our stance and motivation differ between that type of case, where we come into a project at a later stage, and cases where we join the project from the earliest phase.

The interior team often works with the landscape team, and we find it very helpful. We usually work on common areas such as entrances, lobbies and lounges, which are integral parts of the stories of people who are visiting that facility and then going to the next place. And, naturally, they are strongly related to the landscape design of the exterior space. In a wedding hall renovation project, we ended up asking for help from the landscape team as we were holding repeated discussions with the client. The client initially asked for interior design, but finally commissioned us to orchestrate a small space between the building façade and the public road. I think because of its pursuit of ideal architecture and interior for a specific site, JMA/PCPAJ emphasizes the role of the landscape team.

We have to work hard to live up to expectations. Currently, we are checking the weather and climate of project sites and investigating the vegetation and various other environmental factors as part of our efforts to trigger design ideas from a broader perspective. We want to have more achievements in terms of creating added value with a design approach that integrates architecture, interior design and landscape design, and we want to share those achievements externally.

As a proposal to overcome a challenge of the site and add value to the area, I would point to the KIRARITO GINZA project. The site is located right between Ginza and Kyobashi, and is not so crowded as the Ginza 4-chome crossing. So creating a sense of bustle and vibrancy was an issue. To approach this, we thought we might create something that was otherwise missing in Ginza in order to stimulate the curiosity of passersby and provide a place where people could get together. Although Ginza is one of the most famous precincts in Japan, it does not have tree-lined streets because the subways running under the roads and the condition of the surrounding soil make it impossible to plant trees. So we thought about creating hanging gardens inside the building and, accordingly, planted trees on the fourth-floor terrace and created a rooftop garden. People can now see large trees that don’t otherwise exist on Ginza’s main streets. While satisfying the client’s demand for creating a place where people could get together, we also delivered a space where people can experience nature in Ginza, a district that in many ways represents Japan as a whole. Our efforts consequently helped attract people to the upper floors of the building.

Even from the standpoint of a landscape designer, the project was very interesting. The top-floor wedding hall has a rooftop garden with lines of trees, the leaves of which drift down to the downstairs elevator halls—the design story was also marvelous.

We thought it crucial to ensure that the interior design reflects the concept of the entire building. By placing scatterings of real leaves between the layers of wall glass in the open elevator hall, we gave visitors using the elevators a view that looks like leaves falling down from the trees in the splendid terrace and on the rooftop. We hoped that they would experience the transition from architecture to interior unconsciously.

As indicated by what we are talking about now, the strength of our organization lies in the fact that it is not vertically divided, despite us being a group of highly specialized professionals. The layout of our office is not divided by section. We can hear discussions among the interior team as well as what the architects are talking about with Mitsui-san. Actually, I make it a habit to strain my ears. For example, when I hear people over there somewhere talking about wall greening or biodiversity, I become conscious of the role that the landscape team will play in the project. I think the open culture in which neither age nor position creates a barrier to anything is another factor driving the deeper discussions on design, and it leads to innovative ideas, like the case of KIRARITO GINZA mentioned by Yokoyama-san.

I see each field in design getting more and more specialized in order to respond to a society that is become ever more complex as time passes. This will raise the level of design quality in each field, resulting in more and more sophisticated design as a whole. At the same time, however, it also causes people in each profession to become overly conscious of the boundaries between them, which creates the risk of confining design within a limited perspective. How can we think about design seamlessly beyond the boundaries that separate the various disciplines? That seems to be one of the issues designers of today must consider. At JMA/PCPAJ, highly specialized team members from each field can work together in the same organization, holding discussions and developing ideas from their respective perspectives without hesitation and without thinking about the boundaries between them. As exemplified by the integrated scale in the earlier-mentioned Hilton Okinawa Chatan Resort project, people using the space won’t notice any uncomfortable or jarring elements.

Also crucial is the flatness of our organization, which extends not only to all employees, but also to our principal, Jun Mitsui. Despite the differences in the roles we play according to our career stage and function, all team members, including both senior staff and new hires, call each other not by job title but by name, adding the Japanese honorific “san.” And we all work together to accomplish tasks. I enjoy working at the frontline, too. I recently made an interior model, although, probably due to my old eyes, I did cut my finger rather deeply (laughs). We should also not forget that every member of our team, regardless of gender, nationality or specialization, is able to express his or her individuality. This is because Jun Mitsui, the leader of the organization, sees the whole person, and his philosophy is shared by all. Team members from diverse backgrounds can work together in a flexible manner beyond the boundaries of function or specialization—this is what makes our organization so unique.