Airbnb co-founder and CPO, Joe Gebbia, has created Samara, a dedicated multidisciplinary innovation and design studio within Airbnb. As a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Gebbia has always been impassioned by design and its power to reimagine the future.
The team behind Samara launched the Yoshino Cedar House in July 2016. With an aging population and growing urbanization, many of Japan’s rural villages are left diminished, which not only leads to financial hardships for the communities, but an abandonment of traditions and trade. To address this, the building is made from the cedar trees surrounding Yoshino, felled by local woodsmen and built by the town’s carpenters. In its entirety, the project is a celebration of the local traditions of the region, while also showing an innovative new way to interact with a space.
Designed and built for Kenya Hara’s House Vision exhibition in Tokyo and created in collaboration with Tokyo-based architect Go Hasegawa, the house realizes how architectural features can engender a deeper relationship between hosts and guests. Following the exhibition, the Yoshino Cedar House was permanently installed in Yoshino, a bucolic town in the Nara district of Japan, where it remains a bookable Airbnb listing that is maintained by the village.
