Schemata Architects, led by principal architect Jo Nagasaka, has completed a thoughtful renovation of a traditional Japanese machiya townhouse, creating a new headquarters for Uchida Shōten, a hardware manufacturing company with a 160-year history in Fujisawa City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. The two-story wooden structure draws inspiration from its historic context along the former Tōkaidō road, where Fujisawa-juku once served as the sixth post town during the Edo period. The design team carefully rooted the building in the spatial logic of the surrounding neighborhood, where narrow, elongated plots have long shaped a distinctive townhouse culture that continues to define the area's character today.

The project embraces the machiya architectural style, which is characterized by narrow, deep layouts, wooden latticework, and the integration of living and working spaces. For a company whose business centers on building components, this project represents both a practical solution and a conceptual statement. The architects introduced a deliberate disruption to the typical corporate routine while offering Fujisawa a small but active space for cultural circulation along the historic Tōkaidō route. The design reflects careful attention to budget constraints and conceptual clarity, prioritizing function over formal expression.

A series of simple frames forms a single, large box-like structure, avoiding expressive architectural gestures in favor of flexibility and longevity. This minimalist approach ensures the building can adapt to changing needs over time. The north facade features operable awning windows that open toward the street, allowing natural light, movement, and the presence of people inside to filter outward and engage with the public realm. This transparency creates a dialogue between the workspace and the historic streetscape, maintaining the machiya tradition of connecting interior activities with the neighborhood.

Urban memory serves as the primary architectural reference for the project. During the Edo period, taxation policies based on street frontage encouraged minimal widths and deep plots, which were then subdivided into distinct zones: retail areas at the front, living quarters at the rear, and storage or sleeping spaces above or behind. Uchida Shōten's previous buildings on both sides of the road followed this traditional logic, with offices and shops facing the street and more private functions tucked away behind. While the original plan was to renovate the historic main residence across the road, structural deterioration and seismic safety concerns shifted priorities toward new construction.

The new head office establishes a contemporary presence that anchors activity on the site while maintaining a similar scale to the former office, as staff numbers remain unchanged. However, the program has been reorganized to introduce a layer of public and cultural engagement. An artist-in-residence space occupies the front of the building, directly addressing the street, while offices are positioned toward the rear. This front space functions daily as the entrance and communal area but also opens to external users, including artists, designers, students, and international creators, for production and exhibition purposes. Behind typically closed shutters, a compact living area known as the nedoko, or 'berth,' includes basic residential facilities and a generous loft accessed by a spiral staircase, allowing temporary stays on site.