G ARCHITECTS STUDIO was founded in 2013 by Ryohei Tanaka, the principal architect and designer.

Tanaka began his career at Kengo Kuma & Associates in Tokyo(2006-2013). One of the most significant designers in contemporary architecture, Kengo Kuma’s work builds upon a legacy of Japanese craftsmanship while rethinking how we use materials. Tanaka learned how to use materials for architecture in his office.

Tokyo-based G ARCHITECTS STUDIO is led by a team of young Japanese architects.

We like to convert simple, small, everyday ideas into architectural concepts. We often find our ideas in craftwork, DIY projects, repairing methods, as well as painting techniques. By combining these with structural ideas, and applying them to architectural design, we aim to gain universality.

We also tend to choose concepts that tell a story. People sympathize with the design thanks to its background story – these are the types of architectural designs we are interested in creating.

In one of our projects, we used copper, often used for Kyoto's temples, as the building material for a coffee stand in Kyoto, and chemically created rust on the wall. In general, it would take years for copper to rust in this manner. For this project, we used the concept of time - in the sense that it takes a long time for copper to rust naturally - and the history associated with it for the architectural design.

We also consciously try to give a sense of tension in our projects, using elements created by graphics and objects. In one of our interior design projects, for example, we installed four sets of inner shoes in different colors in what was otherwise an all-white minimalist office setting. The purpose was to evoke a sense of tension, or kekkai - the spiritual barrier dividing the secular area from the sacred in Shintoism.

As the Japanese economy has calmed down, G ARCHITECTS STUDIO aims to spearhead a design approach in which we connect history and time with new values by looking back on the past.