The competition for the NOT A HOTEL villa in Yakushima has attracted a jaw dropping thousand proposals worldwide.

I have to say, in all honesty, the level of quality and thoughtfulness, elegance of the design and the experience from all 10 finalists was, simply astounding.

There is an incredibly strong generation of emerging architects out there.

The proposals that spoke most to me were the designs that addressed the relentless tropical rains of the Yakushima ecosystem as a fundamental aspect of the experience. When you go to this rainforest, you will often find yourself seeking shelter from the rains and to turn that into an opportunity for mindfulness and awareness, as a way to heighten the senses, and turn the drizzle into a lyrical experience of communing with the environment, seem to be the strongest, and seem to produce the strongest designs.

Echoes of the mountain orchestrated the rains on a series of gently curving roofs, turning the orchestration of droplets, draining off the roof service into a kind of manmade waterfall of awareness of the elements. Between forests, creating a thoughtful sighting of the rooms, connected with a kind of umbilical cord of canopies so that you actually could move around almost the entire property, from room to room, even under a drizzle.

The primitive retreat created at first glance, a kind of autonomous rectangular volume, but upon closer inspection, created a vast outdoor area that you could inhabit during the rains with beautifully framed views of the surrounding landscape, and finally deep transparency, created a sequence of rooms surrounded by the wallpaper of the surrounding rainforest. At the end of the day, the winning proposal by Stephen Chu, Sound of Rain, most blatantly addressed the relentless rainfall, as the core experience, a large roof creating a manmade mirror pond from where rain would overspill, making a large, shaded area underneath it. And it's sort of 360 immersion into the rainforest. At the heart of it, the beating heart of the home, a conversation pit sunken into the ground under a giant skylight, covered by water, would turn the rings of water emanating from the rainfall into a captivating show of light and shadow, literally transforming the weather into a mindful experience.

All in all, I think all finalists work deserve to be built in one form or the other, and I hope that NOT A HOTEL will find other ways for these talented young architects to put their skills and abilities to good use. No doubt I'm left with a mixture of admiration and almost anxiety at the skill of the future generations following immediately behind us.

With its second edition, this competition has evolved beyond a Japan-born initiative into an international platform that is drawing global attention. What moved me most was the incredible determination of the finalists. In response to NOT A HOTEL's very real challenge of creating architecture that will actually be built, these young talents confronted it head-on—pushing back with their own sensitivity, logic, and ambition to surpass expectations. The Grand Prize-winning proposal, Sound of Rain, poetically yet boldly translated an experience that could only exist in Yakushima through the natural phenomenon of rain. I believe this competition will become a gateway for emerging talent around the world, and a place where the next chapter of architectural history begins to take shape. I feel a great sense of excitement and anticipation for that future.

As we continue to hear that we are now living in the age of AI, the question remains: by what standards should we measure the quality of creative work?

What I hoped to see in this competition was a sense of identity grounded in physical presence—

and a raw, yet beautiful desire to pursue an ideal with sincerity.

The shortlisted proposals were not imitations shaped by marketing,

but rather small creatures imbued with the will to rise into reality.

Even when they may appear like mere fantasies,

humanity has always found ways to transcend the impossible.

Steven Chu's proposal, presented with confidence and without fear of risk,

quietly yet powerfully drew us toward a future we long to see.

And in doing so,

it offered a glimpse into what creation can become.