In the Seto Inland Sea, on the island of Sagishima, BIG | Bjarke Ingels Group has completed NOT A HOTEL Setouchi, a new resort for the Japanese hospitality brand NOT A HOTEL comprising three villas, a beachfront restaurant and a private beach.
Set on a 30,000-square-metre site at the island’s southwestern cape, the project treats the landscape as both building material and design generator: completed in less than two years, the villas are embedded into the mountainous terrain and built using soil taken directly from the site through the traditional rammed-earth technique.
Three villas shaped by the topography
The project is guided by a dialogue between Scandinavian design and Japanese culture, which BIG uses as a framework for working in continuity with Sagishima’s natural contours. At the core of the masterplan is the restoration of the site’s undulating terrain: grasses were harvested before construction, while olive trees, lemon trees and native vegetation were reintroduced to bring the landscape back to life. The three four-bedroom villas, named 180, 270 and 360 according to their position and corresponding views, are arranged along the site’s changing elevations, following existing roads and infrastructure like a continuous ribbon climbing the hillside.
Rather than simply sitting on the ground, the architecture appears carved into and drawn out of the topography. Bjarke Ingels at Not a Hotel Setouchi, ©Ryohei Koike / BIG
"The archipelago around Sagishima is like a Japanese landscape painting. Steep rolling hills covered in lush green vegetation erupt from the tranquillity of the Seto Inland Sea. The four pavilions are conceived as extensions of the dramatic topography. Hilltops and peninsulas, outcroppings and canyons are outlined by rammed earth walls and solar roofs to provide pavilions with 360-, 270-, 180-, and 90-degree views of the surrounding scenery. On one hand, each home is like an inhabited view, open and extroverted. On the other, their spinal walls outline a private and protected space – open only to the sky. Macrocosmos meets microcosmos, traditional meets modern; Scandinavian and Japanese, the villas are architectural oxymorons embodying seemingly contradictory elements into a holistic hospitable whole.” - Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Creative Director, BIG.
Three ways of inhabiting the landscape
Each villa responds precisely to its location within the site. 360, positioned at the highest point, takes the form of a ring, opening up uninterrupted views across Setouchi’s layered land- and seascape while organising the house around a private central courtyard. 270 frames an expansive panorama of the archipelago and includes a sauna, outdoor relaxation areas, a pool and a firepit, arranged like floating islands around water. 180, located closest to the shoreline at the tip of the peninsula, takes its shape from the coastline itself: a curved form that follows the site’s natural edge and encloses an inner courtyard with gentle slopes, mossy paths and trees that change with the seasons.
Inside, the homes are conceived as fluid, unified spaces, while bathrooms and storage areas are contained within separate pods. Each pod is topped with a skylight, preserving a constant relationship with the sky and introducing a sense of intimacy into interiors that remain strongly open to the surrounding landscape. The result is a carefully balanced dialogue between exposure and shelter, panoramic openness and domestic retreat.
Local earth, vernacular references and technology
The project explicitly references elements of traditional Japanese architecture, reinterpreting them through a contemporary language. The glass façades, which dissolve the boundary between inside and outside, reinterpret the logic of shoji screens, while the pattern of the black slate floors draws from the layout of tatami mats.
Yet the project’s strongest material identity lies in its load-bearing clay walls, made using soil from the site itself: dense, layered surfaces whose colours and textures evoke geological strata rather than conventional finishes.
The roofs also contribute to this synthesis of tradition and innovation. Clad in low-reflective solar tiles, they offer a technological reinterpretation of the traditional Japanese roof. Operable façades and overhangs promote passive cooling in spring and summer, while rainwater is collected onsite to irrigate the landscape. Sustainability here does not appear as an added layer, but as an integral part of the architectural concept.
BIG’s first completed buildings in Japan
According to BIG partner Leon Rost, “When we first visited Sagishima, we found ourselves tracing the terraced contours of the site, always drawn toward the horizon. That walk wrote the architecture – each step along the hillside became the curving forms of the villas, their long facades opening to capture the panoramic sea.”
From that direct reading of the landscape came the villas’ curved forms and their long façades opening toward the sea. The resort therefore does more than provide a luxury stay: it constructs a form of hospitality deeply rooted in the island’s geography and in the precision of its material expression.
With NOT A HOTEL Setouchi, BIG completes its first built works in Japan, adding a new chapter to the studio’s ongoing exploration of contemporary hospitality. On Sagishima, however, BIG’s language finds an especially resonant condition: a meeting point between Danish design philosophy, traditional Japanese architecture and contemporary construction precision. More than an isolated resort, the project reads as an inhabited landscape, where architecture and nature ultimately become inseparable.
Photos ©Kenta Hasegawa (unless otherwise stated)
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