01
Kitakanto Civic Library
Civic · Gunma, Japan · 2019
F. Nakata Studios
Selected Works,
Selected Works,
1996–2024
Architecture that breathes with the city — built in Tokyo, lived across the world.
Chapter I · Reading Room
How to read this archive
This archive catalogues one hundred and thirty-four works delivered by the studio between 1996 and 2024 — thirty-eight completed buildings, twelve masterplans, and eighty-four adaptive-reuse projects distributed across eleven countries on four continents. It is organised first by typology, then by year of completion, then by region.
Each plate is numbered in the order the project was formally commissioned, not the order of construction. The four typological anchors are Civic, Cultural, Residential, and Masterplan; a fifth, unlisted category collects our adaptive-reuse commissions under their original typology.
Only 3.7% of submitted commissions are accepted each year. That curatorial discipline is the reason this archive reads the way it does — thin, considered, and free of speculative work. Every plate below was authored under the direct hand of Fumiko Nakata.
Civic
Cultural
Residential
Masterplan
Table of Contents
Index by typology
-
01
Civic
11 completed buildings
Representative: Kitakanto Civic Library, Gunma, 2019
Enter the civic plates → -
02
Cultural
14 completed buildings
Representative: Setagaya Triennial Pavilion, Tokyo, 2022
Enter the cultural plates → -
03
Residential
13 completed buildings
Representative: Faubourg Saint-Laurent Houses, Montréal, 2021
Enter the residential plates → -
04
Masterplan
12 masterplans · 84 adaptive-reuse projects
Representative: Yokohama Bay Adaptive Metabolism, 2017
Enter the masterplan plates →
Plates 01–09 of 134 works on file. Full archive available on request to verified press and institutional clients.
02
Setagaya Triennial Pavilion
Cultural · Tokyo, Japan · 2022
03
Faubourg Saint-Laurent Houses
Residential · Montréal, Canada · 2021
04
Yokohama Bay Adaptive Metabolism
Masterplan · Kanagawa, Japan · 2017
05
Kobe Maritime Museum Annexe
Cultural · Hyogo, Japan · 2018
06
Sapporo Concert Hall
Civic · Hokkaido, Japan · 2015
07
Lisbon Chancery of the Eastern Pacific
Civic · Lisbon, Portugal · 2023
08
Guangzhou Riverbend Courts
Residential · Guangdong, China · 2020
09
Kamakura Heritage Cultural Centre
Cultural · Kanagawa, Japan · 2024
Verified at the building, not in the brochure.
Each metric below is sourced, audited, and dated. Where third-party verification applies, the certifying body is named.
- Net-zero operational energy
- 14of 18 buildings
- AR Future Projects shortlists
- 8times since 2015
- ISO 9001 & ISO 14001
- 2012to present
- Average institutional client tenure
- 11.4years across 62 partnerships
- UIA Gold Medal, Public Architecture
- 2021for Kitakanto Civic Library
- Pritzker Critics’ Choice designation
- 2times, 2019 & 2023
Verified by third-party commissioning, 2015–2024
The Architectural Review, London
Newest revision audited Q3 2024
Studio record, 1996–2024
First Asian-led studio to receive the award
Hyatt Foundation, Chicago
Signature essay · Plate 01
Kitakanto Civic Library — a 41% reduction in modelled summer peak load, and what it took to get there.
When Gunma Prefecture commissioned the studio in 2014, the brief asked for a thirty-two thousand square metre civic library and asked for it on a difficult site: a former freight yard exposed to afternoon western sun, surrounded by low-rise residential blocks whose consent would make or break the project on day one.
Four instruments did most of the work. A continuous horizontal timber louvre on the west and south elevations, calibrated against hourly solar geometry rather than the static worst-case day. A thermal labyrinth cast into the building’s plinth, drawing night air through twenty-eight kilometres of embedded duct. A reading-room plan organised as a single north-lit spine, so that every seat has daylight and no seat has direct sun. And a phase-change material plaster, applied by the studio’s materials atelier after fourteen full-scale mockups.
The modelled outcome, audited post-occupancy by an independent commissioning agent in 2021, was a forty-one percent reduction in summer peak energy load against the comparable civic typology. The first winter, the building did something we did not model: it became the warmest place in the precinct on the coldest nights, and the neighbourhood began to use its plaza accordingly.
Commission a Studio Conversation