Atelier in Lake Yamanaka is a minimal architecture project located in Yamanashi, Japan, designed by ALA. The site has a fine view to Mt. Fuji and the client required a café, shop and guest rooms along with full factory functionality and a garden overlooking the mountain view. The company creates daily fragrance products with the concept of naturally, friendly ingredients integrated into human life and as such hoped to create a building as a symbol to which would attract people of the same mindset. The architects translated the required functions into five different volumes to avoid the typical feeling of a big factory space, while shifting both in plan and scale. The shifted composition allows the mountain views from all rooms so that they could put glazings within gaps between the volumes. The windows are in random proportions according to room function and show different framed mountain views. A garden for playground, for growing herbs is connected to the buildings by zigzag terrace.

Photography by Masao Nishikawa