{"id":70907,"date":"2026-08-08T12:34:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/70907\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T12:34:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:34:40","slug":"made-to-order-okinawas-new-standard-in-architecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/70907\/","title":{"rendered":"Made to Order: Okinawa’s New Standard in Architecture"},"content":{"rendered":"

The clean, practical buildings left behind by the US military occupation of Okinawa in Japan are today influencing a new style of residence there: the Okinawa Standard.<\/p>\n

Architect Yasushi Higa has a thing for simplicity. He puts it down to growing up in Okinawa surrounded by the box-like concrete homes of the US military. \u201cI came to realise how great they were,\u201d he says. Like many of his peers, Higa graduated from university and left Okinawa for the bright lights of Tokyo. After seven years he came back home \u2013 as many Okinawans eventually do \u2013 and chose to set up his own design and interiors company.<\/p>\n

Okinawa\u2019s modern architectural style developed during the occupation years after the war. Many of the old wooden houses had fallen into disrepair and in their place came a new kind of tropical modernism, influenced both by the off-base homes of the US military and the powerful local climate, which has all the heat, typhoons and lashing rain that a building can contend with.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem with US houses was that the aesthetics were good but they weren\u2019t so comfortable to live in,\u201d Higa says. \u201cAmericans didn\u2019t mind using machines to control the temperature but we prefer to have natural breezes and open the windows when it\u2019s raining.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WhiteFirst Okinawa Standard house<\/p>\n

\"WhiteGarden at Masayoshi Higa\u2019s house<\/p>\n

\"HairdresserHairdresser Shigeo Shima with his wife Ayumi and their children<\/p>\n

\"YasushiYasushi Higa, architect<\/p>\n

\"ModernShima family home and adjacent hairdressing salon<\/p>\n

\"ChildIchika Shima playing at the family home<\/p>\n

In recent years, Higa also noticed that Okinawa\u2019s style was starting to be compromised by mainland housing companies that had little understanding of the local context. He started to think about a new template for the modern Okinawan house. Working with Nami Makishi, an Okinawan architect who lives in Tokyo, the duo came up with a prototype house that they named the Okinawa Standard.<\/p>\n

The basic design is a single-storey box made with materials \u2013 mainly steel and concrete blocks \u2013 that are sourced in Okinawa where possible with a starting price of around \u00a516m (\u20ac115,000). Like Lego, the proportions of the house depend on the blocks and Higa tries not to cut them to avoid waste. The blocks are white, there is always a terrace and a wall or two of what Okinawans call \u201chana blocks\u201d: hollow concrete blocks that allow cool breezes.<\/p>\n

Masayoshi Higa (no relation) was the first person to commission one of the Okinawa Standard houses with his wife and three children in 2007. \u201cI love this house more than anyone,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s so easy to live in \u2013 the only place we have an air conditioner is in the children\u2019s room. We can leave the screens open even when we\u2019re out.\u201d Masayoshi is a skilled gardener and his garden is filled with native Okinawan plants. The furniture inside came from the interiors shop Mix Life-Style, an airy concrete space in Ginowan that Yasushi Higa now shares with Tokyo design store D&Department.<\/p>\n

Shigeo Shima is an old school friend of the architect\u2019s. A hairdresser, he lived in Tokyo for 25 years before returning two years ago. \u201cMy wife Ayumi and I started thinking about where to raise children. A Tokyo house would be much smaller. I\u2019d always joked that if I ever built a house, Higa-san would have to build it,\u201d he says. Higa designed the family home and adjacent hair salon for Shima.<\/p>\n

The couple have kept the interior simple. The floor is an imported teak that is used all over the island and they went for the two-bedroom model with an option to divide the second bedroom when their children get older. Hibiscus has been planted around the property and solar panels sit on top of the house, making the most of the climate. \u201cWe like open space, even the texture of the blocks,\u201d says Shima. \u201cIt feels like a sophisticated version of the military houses I saw when I was growing up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Takehisa Uehara first came across an Okinawa Standard house in a magazine. \u201cI was struck by the clean lines, the whiteness and the blue sky,\u201d he says. Uehara lives in the house with his wife Sawako and their teenaged daughters. \u201cHiga-san said to us: this isn\u2019t luxury design \u2013 it\u2019s not decorative, you bring your own colour.\u201d The simplicity appealed. \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t dream of spending a fortune on a door,\u201d says Sawako. \u201cWe would rather go on holiday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Higa has now been approached to build a hotel and even a small hospital, all in Okinawa. He\u2019s also had inquiries from fans as far afield as Kansai and Sendai who want to have their own Okinawa Standard home. He makes it clear to everyone that he\u2019ll stick to the basic Okinawa Standard principles. \u201cI just wanted to get away from the idea of overly designed, expensive architecture and see more balance,\u201d he says. It seems he has struck a chord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The clean, practical buildings left behind by the US military occupation of Okinawa in Japan are today influencing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[8,162,28538,45689,45690],"class_list":["post-70907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-okinawa","tag-japan","tag-okinawa","tag-residences","tag-tropical-modernism","tag-yasushi-higa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}