Flow Gallery is pleased to present a showcase of miniature wooden houses by craftsman Yukihiro Akama. Based in rural Yorkshire, Yukihiro creates his whimsical one-off sculptures alongside working as a carpenter and furniture maker. He has exhibited in the UK and abroad, including a solo exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
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About Yukihiro Akama & his practice
Yukihiro Akama’s wooden houses, which he calls ‘ki no ie’, are miniature worlds that inspire imagination. Charmingly individual, each seems to tell a story. They also, however, demonstrate Yukihiro’s meticulous technical skill. Every house is carved entirely from a single block of wood, down to the smallest architectural detail.
Yukihiro honed his woodworking practice in Japan and the UK, both in his personal and professional life. Growing up in the Miyagi prefecture of Japan, he developed his love for wood whilst walking and foraging in Japan’s native forests. He trained and worked as an architectural technician, whilst continuing to advance his carpentry skills privately. Yukihiro even designed a house for his family to live in – although plans changed when he moved to the UK in 2011. He began making miniature wooden houses in 2013. Since 2021, he has worked as a furniture maker, crafting his whimsical houses in his free time.
At this pace, he crafts only several houses a month, working on multiple houses at the same time. He prefers this way of making, keeping his artistic practice as a purely creative outlet rather than a full-time occupation. This allows him to give focus to each piece rather than pressuring production, giving the houses their individual character.
Yukihiro uses offcuts of oak, birch, black walnut and other characterful timbers, especially since he has access to these high-quality woods as a furniture maker. Although he used to develop designs through sketching, now he is more often led by the wood itself. He allows the wood’s naturally present knots and grain patterns to guide his hand, slowly uncovering forms as if the houses were waiting within the timber.
He explains how “Often I find the house in the wood ”, where the “grains and the knots show me where to cut.”
Yukihiro works with a myriad of Japanese woodworking tools, to carve, chisel and whittle the intricate forms. Carving the architectural features, particularly thin stilt-like ‘legs’, is a delicate process. Surfaces are enlivened with carved patterns, often juxtaposed so that the construction mimics different materials. Enhancing the illusion of age or materiality, elements of the houses are coloured and stained with ingenious techniques – chemical reactions darken the wood to deep ebony, while subtle stains and finishes add layers of depth.
The diversity of his techniques enables Yukihiro to keep experimenting, so that each house has its own sense of place and personality. They are never tied to a particular country, although he is often inspired to interpret the architectural traditions of Japan and Europe. He imagines that they belong to different places – as if we could come across them on a mountain or a cliff-edge, or nestled in the forest. Often evoking humble structures, like barns or cabins, his houses seem timeless and naturally situated in countryside settings.
Yet, Yukihiro only envisions where his houses could be as he completes them – dreaming up titles that suggest their locations or inhabitants. In abstract, ambiguous ways, each house stirs something deeply personal yet universal, evoking distant memories or imagined realms. Yukihiro enjoys this liminal space between fantasy and reality:
“I think what I’m trying to do is to design something that could potentially exist but doesn’t; something a bit in between.”
Sources: prepared with reference & thanks to text by
Amanda Peach (Yorkshire Sculpture Park);
Natasha Goodfellow (Gardens Illustrated);
Gary Inman (Bother Magazine)
