Ever since the ancient time, people have been choosing the materials for the living environment from the nature to live safe and comfortable life. As people became more cultured, they started using more beautiful materials and did some processing onto these material to make it appear even more beautifully. As you can see in the tea rooms of the tea ceremony, Sukisha (the seekers of the Way of Tea) have been reflecting their sense of beauty upon constructing the style of Sukiya architecture which has tea room and hiroma (Japanese function room).
In the modern times, along with traditional Japanese houses, the influence of European culture had flown into Japan from Meiji period onwards (1868~). Many owners of zaibatsu(finalcial combine) and local wealthy families built both Japanese traditional houses and European houses with Japanese delicate finishing. Wood, soil and stone were the major housing materials in both Japan and Europe. There are many of these European styled buildings from this age still present with very delicate and precise work typical of Japanese characteristic. These fine works can been seen in wooden millworks, pattern matching marble drawing a gentle curve lines and skills in plaster works.
These days, the design became simpler with the machine production in mind to prioritise the cost reduction. Due to this fact, millworks are something that the constructor buys rather than make in residential architecture nowadays. However, the architectures that leave their name on the history have a lot of millworks made by human hand and skills.
House is a place people live and have everyday life. Although it may not be as precise as machine made, we believe it is Yabashi's responsibility to use hand made millworks that gives you humanly warmth as much as possible. "Ou" is a revived Modern European architecture with wood, soil and stone.