Mio Tsuneyama

This conversation was first published for OPEN Architecture Festival, Issue Five (2025): In the Eyes of the Ordinary.

In conversation with Ida Bjerga & Alexander Skovgaard Bagger Hadi
Written by Ida Bjerga

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes.

I first came across Mio Tsuneyama while living in a shared house in Tokyo’s Fudō-mae neighbourhood. The house, an original 1977 structure with a steel-framed ground floor and timber-framed upper floor, had been carefully stripped back and reimagined with raw, exposed materials. It became known as House for Seven People (2013), one of Mio’s earliest transformation projects in Tokyo and among the first to be published widely. Since then, Mio has steadily gained recognition within the landscape of contemporary Japanese architecture. Most recently, she featured in Make Do With Now, a documentary and exhibition exploring the ecological and social approaches developed by a generation of young Japanese architects, many of whom entered the profession in the aftermath of the 2011 Great Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami. Reflecting on the impact of that experience in an earlier interview, Mio said: “The experience of the Tōhoku Earthquake in 2011 changed my entire perspective on architecture. Until then, I had been focused on designing refined, minimalist spaces with carefully considered materials and details, things I still appreciate, but I realised architecture had to be more than that. It has to contribute to society in a meaningful way.”

Mio is the founder of Studio mnm, a Tokyo-based practice known for rethinking architecture through the lens of everyday life. Her work often draws on overlooked urban resources such as vacant houses, waste materials, soil, and sunlight—placing architecture within a continuous cycle from production to disposal.

Alexander and I spoke with her about architecture as a temporary node within a complex mesh; her projects House for Seven People and Holes in House; and Urban Wild Ecology, the architectural theory and attitude she shares with her partner, architect Fuminori Nousaku.

HOUSE FOR SEVEN PEOPLE

House for Seven People was a project commissioned by a pair of Mio’s longtime friends. “The client, close friends of mine, had begun to question not just housing, but life itself,” Mio tells us. “They were reconsidering the system they were part of—capitalism, ownership, working and living in the city.” One worked in real estate, the other in accounting. Together, they found this abandoned house on the market—unwanted but full of potential—and saw an opportunity. It was both a financial decision and a way to create better living conditions for themselves. Their previous flat had been a one-room apartment with a tiny kitchen. “It was too cramped to cook, host, or even work from home. Their daily life played out in cafés, libraries, or izakayas. They had been dreaming of a place where they could invite friends and cook properly in a spacious kitchen, right in the heart of Tokyo,” Mio explained.

From this desire, House for Seven People was born—a shared home for seven residents. The design centers on a spacious communal kitchen and living area, alongside private bedrooms, a soaking tub, and even a patch of outdoor space—amenities rarely accessible to solo dwellers in Tokyo. “It became a place where people could really live together,” Mio says. “And that created a different rhythm of life.”

“The house they found was affordable partly because it did not meet the road access requirements; the land was legally ineligible for reconstruction,” she says. “And they liked the idea of sharing it with other people”—not just for practical reasons, but as an expression of a different way of living. “They were questioning the typologies available in the city,” Mio explains. “That wasn’t the direct purpose at first, but it was also a way to create a shift in societal mindsets.” The dominant housing typologies in Tokyo didn’t reflect how they wanted to live. Living alone in small studios, Mio notes, can be deeply isolating and can create big social problems. “Before, people used to live with grandparents, aunts, extended family—there was some openness, a kind of society in the house. Now, especially for single people, it becomes closed off.”

HOLES IN THE HOUSE

Mio and her partner, architect Fuminori Nousaku, are constantly challenging architectural conventions. House for Seven People was one example, but they’ve also applied this mindset to their own home and studio, Holes in the House, a project they began renovating while living in it. In 2017, the pair purchased a 30-year-old, four-storey steel-frame building in Tokyo’s hilly, semi-industrial Nishi-Ōi neighbourhood. It wasn’t on the market yet—and it certainly wasn’t considered desirable. “The house was actually meant to be demolished,” Mio says. “It was kind of urban trash.” But they saw potential in it. With no budget and a determination to avoid taking out a bank loan, they committed to renovating it gradually, using salvaged materials and whatever time they had. “We didn’t have a budget, and our goal was not to take out a bank loan,” Mio explains. “So we renovated it gradually, using whatever materials we had—or were given.”

Their first priority was simply to make the house livable. “We started making our life comfortable by insulating the house and keeping the airtightness,” Mio explains. Since they were already living there during the renovation, comfort came first. The transformation moved forward whenever they had spare time, a bit of budget, or came across usable materials. The first phase involved salvaging large timber panels from a demolished 1:1 exhibition model at the National Museum. “It was meant to be trashed,” Mio says. “Because it came from the National Museum, technically they couldn’t give it to anyone. So we were allowed to pick it up directly from the trash depot.” They used the timber for cladding their office, as well as for flooring and interior walls. “We also got wood fibre from the dead stock of a company, which we used as biodegradable insulation,” she adds. Other materials were similarly redirected from waste to resource.

When we spoke via video, we got a sense of what Mio meant when she described the house as being in a state of ongoing de- and re-construction. A rust-red steel frame cut through the interior. There were no interior walls. Gaping holes open between floors. A staircase connected one level to the next without enclosure. “Our design was shaped by the opportunities we came across,” Mio says. “When we had time or came across materials—we reacted.” They moved in during 2017, completed the office the following year using the salvaged timber, and continued the building in phases. “Until 2021, when I was pregnant and just before our son was born,” she says. “Suddenly we had to hurry. There were nails sticking out, cables hanging everywhere… it wasn’t safe.”

Reflecting on the project, Mio raises a critical question: why must architecture be treated as something fixed and final? “Our understanding of the world is constantly changing, and so are our personal lives,” she says. “The idea of completion is based on a capitalistic concept—because you have to hand the complete building over to the client to get paid.” By keeping the project open-ended, building slowly, flexibly, and over time, Mio and Fuminori propose an alternative model: one that softens the boundary between the building phase and completion. It also allows clients to start with a small budget, avoid large bank loans, and treat buildings as living, evolving spaces. “Why do we need to complete everything at once?” Mio asks. “We should rather continuously adapt and maintain the building together.”

URBAN WILD ECOLOGY

“In 2019, at Holes in the House, we had soil in our garden, and that completely shifted our understanding of beauty in architecture,” Mio explains. “We started composting everything—food waste, wood scraps… and through that process, we experienced firsthand what does and doesn’t return to the earth.” Every time they dug into the soil, they found fragments—plastic bits, fruit stickers, tea bags, packaging. They also saw how plywood barely degrades compared to solid wood, because it’s mostly glue. These tangible moments of decomposition—or the lack of it—transformed how Mio and Fuminori approach material and design decisions, especially when it comes to short-lifespan construction elements.

“Of course, we still use steel and concrete where needed,” she says. “But using plastic sheets just to make something airtight, knowing it would last only a few years, feels disturbing. Why put something into a building if it can’t return to the soil?” Instead, they now seek out materials that breathe, absorb humidity naturally, and biodegrade. “A few years ago, we were drawn to industrial materials—the cool, shiny stuff. But now we use them less. Our understanding has changed.” This shift has reshaped not just their choice of materials, but how they think about architecture more broadly. Urban Wild Ecology is not a fixed philosophy as such, Mio says—“it’s our attitude.” “We’re testing things. The idea is to bring back a kind of wildness we once had, so that when something breaks, we don’t call a service. We just try to fix it ourselves.”

The term Urban Wild Ecology began as a subtitle for Holes in the House, but over time, it evolved into a way of thinking and an architectural attitude. An attitude grounded in immediacy and care: connecting with the resources and energy already around us, bricolaging from what’s available, and rethinking habitability not just for humans, but for multiple species. It’s also a response to the environmental crisis, aligned with both Political Ecology and Deep Ecology, but distinct from both. “Political Ecology often leans on high-tech solutions and is very human-oriented,” she explains. “Deep Ecology, on the other hand, places nature above human needs. But Urban Wild Ecology tries to respect both. It’s not about waiting for a perfect answer, it’s about doing what we can now, with our hands. It might not be perfect, but we act. We try.”

They primarily use materials from the earth and foreground an understanding that while human and non-human habitability partially overlap, that space needs to be shared with care. “We design for humans,” Mio says, “but we try not to disturb others. That includes microorganisms, animals, the soil itself. For example, we choose biodegradable materials that won’t intoxicate the soil. And when we build, we touch the ground as lightly as possible, using independent footings so the ecosystem below can keep working. It’s about small gestures of care.”

So where do we begin, if we want to adopt this way of thinking? “Start by touching the ground lightly,” Mio says. “And use what already exists. Our ecological footprint is already negative. The planet is past its capacity. So instead of extracting more, we should reuse what we’ve already taken.” That doesn’t just mean reducing materials, it means reducing how much surface we occupy. “The footprint of our buildings needs to shrink. We have to leave more of the soil surface untouched, so it can keep functioning.” Existing buildings should be renovated, recycled, or repurposed—not demolished. But when demolition is necessary, Mio says, the process has to change. “In Tokyo, we are using the last landfill, which will last only 50 years. If we tear something down, we also need to figure out where to put the debris. That’s a real problem.”

It’s not about opposing demolition or new construction outright, but rethinking the flow of materials and the limits of the land. “Architecture is a temporary node in a complex mesh,” Mio says. “Demolition, new building, renovation—it’s all about how we circulate materials.”

TEMPORARY NODE WITHIN A COMPLEX MESH

To address the challenges of global warming and ecosystem destruction driven by the material cycles of a capitalist society rooted in mass production and consumption, Mio and Fuminori approach architecture as a temporary node within a complex mesh of resources, knowledge, technology, and institutions. “The mesh is actually based on Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory,” Mio explains. “It’s not just about materials or resources, but also technologies, skills, laws, institutions, infrastructures—all of which shape the environment we build in. Architecture, as we see it, from resource to decomposition, is just a temporary state within this complex mesh.”

It’s easy to see the material chain—from nature and raw matter to reuse or trash—but behind that chain lies a whole network. “How we extract materials depends on our knowledge and skills, but also on systems of supply and logistics,” she continues. “The supply chain is shaped by regulations and industrial priorities, which tend to be based on fast supply and fast consumption. So the mesh isn’t only made of actors—it’s defined by how those actors connect.”

For Mio and Fuminori, designing architecture means designing that mesh and rethinking how rules, tools, materials, and skills interact. “Our role is to find new combinations, new ways of working with this system so we can decompose materials back into the soil—not just pile things into landfills.” This view also reframes the meaning of demolition, renovation, and construction. “As I said earlier, demolition, building new, or transformation—they’re all ways to circulate materials,” Mio says. “We can build with new materials, sure. But what kinds of materials? How long will they last? What can be reused later on? Can they go back to the soil? How long will that take? That’s the mindset we need.”

This attitude is already taking root in the next generation. Mio speaks of those now in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties who were children during the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake. “I think they see the worlddifferently than my generation,” she says. “They’re drawn to salvaged materials. They rescue abandoned houses. They’re less concerned with respecting architectural form and feel more connected to art, philosophy, and a more organic way of designing and working. These young architects aren’t just responding to clients—they’re proposing how to live and work in a changing society.”

Mio goes on to say that she believes the role of the architect is to question the state of the building industry itself. “We’ve all been players in the game, but now we have to question the game. Question the rules.” The demand is already changing. Society is already shifting. But regulation always comes later, she explains. “So we have to challenge, rethink, propose new ways of building—not just repeat what we’ve already done or make visually beautiful things. Questions are the answer.”

This conversation was first published for OPEN Architecture Festival, Issue Five (2025): In the Eyes of the Ordinary.

The issue was produced by students from the Aarhus School of Architecture:
Ida Bjerga, Osmo Hadad-Lange, Alexander Skovgaard Bagger Hadi, and Birke Langkjær Jakobsen.

The non-profit project was supported by The Dreyer Foundation.

Image credits: 1) Suzuki Jumpei, 2) Yasuaki Morinaka, 3) Yasuaki Morinaka, 4) Suzuki Jumpei, 5) Ryogo Utatsu, 6) Ryogo Utatsu