Articles by Miwa Negoro

Conveniently located on the street level of the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC), Orijins, a sleek new coffee shop designed by Dubai-based interior design firm VSHD, draws its inspiration from the beautiful imperfections found in nature. Simplistic in form and rich in texture and materials, the design of the café showcases the beauty that can be found in a sparsely decorated space of muted plaster and opaque creamy hues, which borrow their subdued colors from natural elements such as sand, shells, stone, and wood. In the absence of a rich use of décor, visitors are instead prompted by the forms that bring the space to life, such as the curved volumes in the ceiling, which provide a feeling of calm and grounding.

Cobbadah Beach House is a multi-generational home located at Tugun, a laid-back surf beach on the Gold Coast in southern Queensland. The house is situated on the ridge of a densely vegetated bluff above a beach, with panoramic views to South Stradbroke Island to the north and Coolangatta headland to the south.

This project involved the reconstruction of a house on a flagpole-shaped lot in a subdivided residential land. The buildable area was surrounded by apartments and tightly clustered private homes.

The Nedarag Guesthouse is a non-profit project situated in a remote village of roughly 200 households from the Sunni-Baluch minority in southeastern Iran. In Iran’s centralized and religiously homogeneous development system, ethnic and religious minorities are systematically excluded. In villages like Kahnanikash, this marginalization is particularly severe due to the local practice of Zekri—a religious belief seen as heretical by the central government.

The Doshi Retreat on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein is a contemplative sanctuary conceived and designed collaboratively by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Balkrishna Doshi, his granddaughter Khushnu Panthaki Hoof, and her husband Sönke Hoof. Drawing inspiration from Indian spirituality and the meditative qualities of sound and silence, the retreat offers a sensory journey through space, light, and resonance and a place for solitude, reflection, and transformation.

We planned a sauna facility in Kasama City, known since the Edo period as a center for Kasama ware and ceramics. The site is surrounded by a complex mix of environments: scattered ceramics schools, art museums, and golf facilities, yet also densely lined with residential homes. As a facility intended for use without clothing, the site could be read as being in a four-sided siege situation, enclosed by buildings and open fields.

Urban stadium park with “Wings of Peace” as a symbol of Hiroshima, an International Peace Culture City, to deliver moving and exciting experiences

Nestled in the urban fabric of Surat, Gujarat, Twin House by Design Work Group (DWG) is a compelling architectural response to the evolving dynamics of contemporary Indian living. Conceptualized as a residence for two sibling families, the project embodies a layered interpretation of duality—independence and togetherness, rawness and warmth, monolith and lightness. It celebrates the ethos of familial bonds while embracing modernist design sensibilities rooted in material honesty, minimalism, and spatial harmony.