eing woken in the middle of the night by a phone call
telling you that the furniture factory of the business
you have been developing for the last six years is
on fire would probably leave most people in a state of
gloom. But not Masayuki Oshima, the charismatic
president of Youbi, a small producer of Japanese
hinoki cypress furniture in the picturesque village of
Nishiawakura in Okayama prefecture. After the last
embers were put out and the charred building was
surveyed for anything salvageable (precious little),
Oshima decided to turn disaster into opportunity.
He told his staff that this was their chance to build
a better place for Youbi to explore the use of hinoki
in furniture, and to create a fun and open workspace
for everyone. This was in January 2016.
Fast forward to 2018 and the striking new factory
is now a beacon for the whole village. Getting here,
though, took some effort. ‘We held an internal
workshop in June 2016, where everyone contributed
with ideas for our new home,’ Oshima’s wife Naoko
explains over lunch in the fully glazed canteen that
overlooks the lush green rice paddies surrounding
Youbi’s new HQ. Staff take turns preparing meals,
and it feels more like having lunch at a friend’s house
than eating at a furniture manufacturer. ‘One of the
staff came up with the idea of having a dining room
at the centre of our new factory,’ Naoko continues,‘and this room is, in fact, almost completely in the
centre of our plot of land.’ Her husband later tells
me that since they started preparing and eating their
daily lunch together, communication and quality at
the factory has gone up considerably.
Before founding Youbi, Masayuki Oshima was
learning how to build furniture in Gifu, one of
Japan’s more active furniture-producing regions. He
heard about the village of Nishiawakura’s ambitious
Hundred Year Forest Plan to both rejuvenate the local
lumber industry and secure a sustainable tree-filled
environment. ‘I came on a brief visit and immediately
fell in love with the place and the project,’ he explains.
The next day, he handed in his resignation and decided
to move roughly 300km west to Nishiawakura.
The village has attracted a number of businesses
over the last ten years or so. Besides Youbi, there are a
couple of other small wood producers, such as
Morinogakko, which makes hinoki flooring and other
products for domestic interiors and the building trade.
A former school building nearby has been turned into
a café, bakery and brewery, and is becoming a local hub.
Some 95 per cent of the municipality is covered
by forest. Of that, more than 80 per cent is Japanese
hinoki cypress or sugi cedar. Hinoki has been
traditionally used for the construction of homes and
temples, as well as Japanese bathtubs. Not many »THE BUILDING IS LOCATED
IN NISHIAWAKURA, NEAR
OKAYAMA, ON JAPAN’S
HONSHU ISLAND. FORESTS
MAKE UP SOME 95 PER CENT
OF THE MUNICIPALITYB
∑ 221
ArchitectureNewspaper