Earth by Sou Fujimoto: A Circular Villa Disappearing into the Landscape
Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto has completed a remarkable holiday villa named Earth for hospitality brand Not A Hotel, nestled beneath a sloping planted garden on Ishigaki Island, Japan. With its gentle curves, living roof, and immersive design, the home offers a seamless connection between architecture and nature.
Conceived as a circular concrete structure tucked under a green mound, Earth accommodates up to ten guests and was designed to vanish into its surroundings when viewed from above. The design centers on an experience of nature, serenity, and fluid spatial interaction with the island’s tropical beauty and the sea.
Curved Design and Coastal Views
Earth unfolds in a crescent form, with a curving white wall wrapping a garden that rises over the house and opens toward the sea. This sloped green roof creates a bowl-like hillscape. Fujimoto describes it as “a gentle hilly design that allows guests to feel Ishigaki’s lush greenery and crystal blue ocean from inside the rooms.”
An oval terrace carved into the garden guides guests toward the main living spaces on the upper level. Here, expansive sliding glass doors frame panoramic views of the ocean and connect to an infinity pool that follows the outer curve of the building.
Natural Materials and Spatial Immersion
The architectural expression emphasizes softness and immersion. Materials like white concrete and full-height glass reinforce the openness of the house, while greenery on the roof, curated by landscape gardener Taichi Saito, enables the home to visually dissolve into the island landscape.
Inside, three bedrooms, a playroom, and a low-set bathtub overlook a shallow water feature, adding layers of tranquility. The lower level houses a gym, cold bath, and a skylit sauna, where sunlight passes through the pool above, creating a ripple of underwater patterns.
Program Breakdown
| Level | Program Elements |
|---|---|
| Upper Level | Living room, dining room, three bedrooms, playroom, bathroom |
| Lower Level | Gym, cold bath, sauna with skylight under pool |
| Exterior | Infinity pool, oval terrace, rooftop garden, fire pit, water feature for children |
Architectural Analysis
Fujimoto’s design is rooted in topographical mimicry—the structure mimics a natural hill. The use of a bowl-shaped roof covered in vegetation merges the artificial with the organic. The layout ensures maximum exposure to the sea while protecting internal privacy with a curved white exterior wall.
Materials are chosen for their minimalist and tactile properties: white concrete for form and durability; sliding glass for unobstructed views; and planted surfaces for ecological integration. The pool is not just recreational, but also an ambient device—its water refracts light into the sauna below, adding depth and symbolism.
In contextual terms, the house becomes an extension of Ishigaki’s terrain rather than an object placed on it, redefining the idea of retreat architecture as a camouflaged experience.
Project Importance
Earth challenges traditional notions of villa design. Rather than stand out, it sinks in, inviting reflection on architecture’s role in ecological harmony. For architects, it demonstrates how landscape and building can co-create form, where roof becomes garden, and rooms become framed experiences of nature.
Its sectional strategy—public above, private wellness spaces below—offers a compelling model for future coastal and resort architecture. The villa teaches that homes can act as sensory landscapes, offering wellness not through luxury but through integration with elemental forces: light, water, earth, and sky.
✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight
Sou Fujimoto’s Earth villa is a meditative composition of curves, light, and topography. The circular layout enables fluid spatial relationships, while the planted roof and infinity pool dissolve boundaries between architecture and environment. The visuals are dominated by bright whites and lush greens, with glass transitions enhancing a floating sensation.
One critical point is the ambiguity between building and landscape—does the form risk losing legibility as a dwelling? Yet this tension might be intentional, pushing the typology of vacation homes into new architectural expressions that prioritize environmental disappearance over visibility.
Ultimately, Earth reflects a future-facing attitude toward coastal architecture: gentle, immersive, and quietly radical.
Conclusion
Earth by Sou Fujimoto redefines the architecture of hospitality through landscape-led design. It offers a powerful case study in disappearing architecture—where form follows terrain, and experience is shaped by immersion, not spectacle.
More than a luxury escape, Earth is an architectural experiment that fuses structure with site. It teaches us that sustainability can be subtle, that design can reciprocate nature, and that innovation lies in restraint. As the hospitality industry seeks deeper connections to place, Earth stands as a model for the future of inhabiting nature—discreetly, respectfully, and beautifully.
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