KURKKU FIELDS - A Journey to Feel Texture of Human Being

An era when humans entrust AI to think. Convenient technology has pushed people away from the original human activity; to feel with your five senses, think with your brain, use your wisdom, deeply to understand even the smallest details with sensibility. Where did the “texture of human being” go?
 
KURKKU FIELDS, located in Chiba Prefecture, a 90-minute from Tokyo by bus, is a place where you can reclaim such "texture of human being", feel the touch of life, and restore human activities.

Villas - Cocoon

Kurkku Fields is composed of four elements, a library, villas, restaurants/shops and the grounds of Kurkku Fields.
 
An underground library with an impressive design by Hiroshi Nakamura (NAP Architectural Design Office) with a wonderful selection of 3,000 books. The exterior design is “one with nature”, this results in one having to carefully search for the location and the entrance of the library.

Underground library that guests can use at night

The villa, Cocoon, is directed by Akira Minagawa and designed by Ikken Design Studio. The rooms and furniture are truly beautiful, a space without corners. The villa also includes a Finnish sauna and a restaurant. Refined tableware and objects, a room where you can feel comfortable as if you are wrapped in a soft cocoon.
 
The vast grounds of KURKKU FIELDS include a bar, bonfire stand, Yayoi Kusama and Chim↑Pom’s art, playground equipment made out of wood, poultry farms, stables, and fields where vegetables are grown.

Fabric and interior designed by Akira Minagawa

Enjoy reading in the bathtub 

Finnish sauna

Bathing in the open air while observing the dawn

Guests can choose between a plan to prepare their own dinner and breakfast in the open kitchen with tableware from Staub, Sori Yanagi, and potters from Masayuki Miyagi. Or guests can choose to eat at the restaurant. In the optional tour that guests can experience, they bring a basket and go to harvest the vegetables that they will cook and eat for dinner and breakfast.

Harvest vegetables

There's a carrot near the playground

On the optional tour, you can learn how and where the food we eat comes from. For example, milk is not produced from dairy cows all year round, breast milk from a mother cow that has given birth to a baby. It’s hard work for the cows, as the cows that stopped producing milk would continue to get pregnant and give birth again.
 
Even one egg from a poultry farm has different colors and shapes. I learned how the eggs that I usually buy are aligned to the standard.

Newly born goats

Small eggs may not have yolks

Open Kitchen

To compost the leaves of vegetables, leftover ingredients, etc., guests go to their own compost bins. The experience made me realize and think about how much food is wasted in everyday life (there are things that can be devised, such as chopping up discarded cores and leaves and adding them to soup). If you stay with your child at Kurkku Fields, it might be a wonderful food education experience.
Solar power electricity generated is used to power the facilities, and cheese and bread are made from raw milk, eggs, and wheat harvested in the fields. It was a kind place for everyone, where insects, plants, animals and people lived as an ecosystem.
 
I forgot to check my email and social media during my stay because the "touch of life" that I can feel with five senses was strong. It was a completely new experience that sharpened my senses, a really wonderful concept and experiment.
 
name: Kurkku Fields
location: Kisarazu City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan
website: https://kurkkufields.jp/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kurkkufields/