Shelter Inclusive Place COPAL
by onishimaki+hyakudayuki / o+h
Yamagata, Japan
Project details
Year
2025
Project year
2022
Site area
22,295.30 m²
Building area
3,334.81 m²
Project website
Location
Team credits
Architects
- o+h -
Maki Onishi,
Yuki Hyakuda,
Ayako Ikebe,
Tetsuya Fukuda,
Masaki Sakano.
Contributing partners
Shelter Co. Ltd,
TAKAMOKU Co. Ltd,
Otias Co. Ltd,
Ishikawa Kensetsu Sangyo Co. Ltd,
Takahashi Denko Co. Ltd,
Taihei Building Service Co. Ltd,
ALSOK Yamagata Co. Ltd,
Voce LLC,
Apls,
COPAL,
HSC LLC.
commissioned by
City of Yamagata (Yamagata-shi)
Set on the outskirts of Yamagata City, surrounded by rice fields and the Zao mountain range, COPAL addresses a clear social gap. Across Japan, few playgrounds welcome children with physical or cognitive disabilities, leaving families with limited access to safe public recreation. COPAL changes this by creating one of the first inclusive play environments in the country – a space where children of all abilities and backgrounds can gather throughout the year.
The project was realized through a Private Finance Initiative model that encouraged collaboration across disciplines from the outset. Architects, city officials, builders, and community groups met regularly in ‘Creation Meetings’ to explore what inclusivity could mean in practice. Children, parents, educators and disability advocates all contributed ideas, shaping both the building and its use. Inclusivity was treated not as a technical requirement but as the project’s very foundation.
Designed by o+h, the architecture office of Maki Onishi and Yuki Hyakuda, COPAL unfolds as one continuous landscape linking indoors and outdoors. Excavated soil was reused to form gentle slopes and embankments, allowing the building to merge with its surroundings. The roofline echoes the mountains, while deep eaves protect from sun and snow and frame open views. The result feels less like a structure than a terrain – an environment for exploration.
Visitors enter through a half-sunken gymnasium framed by timber arches, where people of all ages play together. A broad ramp connects this hall to an indoor play area, providing wheelchair access to the top of slides while also serving as a hill for others to run or roll down. Nearby, quiet nooks offer space to rest, a soft-floored area welcomes infants and a café using local ingredients brings families together. Every corner invites use without exclusion: the slope is both access and play, the ramp both path and stage.
Inclusivity extends to detail. Paths are free of thresholds, light and acoustics support sensory comfort, sightlines are clear for orientation. Each child finds a way to move independently, at their own pace. The design avoids hierarchies of use – everyone shares the same joyful topography.
Environmental performance was central to the project’s design. The structure combines a prefabricated steel frame and Yamagata-grown larch, supporting regional forestry while reducing carbon emissions. A hybrid system of radiant floor heating and warm-air ventilation keeps the large halls comfortable and energy-efficient, allowing barefoot play even in winter. Around the main volumes, narrow service zones buffer the interior from heat loss, while façades with Low-E double glazing bring in soft natural light and maintain thermal comfort.
The process that created COPAL was as inclusive as the space itself. The ‘Creation Meetings’ became a model for participatory design, gathering voices that rarely meet in public projects. Together, participants discussed accessibility, programming and long-term maintenance. The approach fostered genuine ownership, ensuring that the facility would grow with its users rather than be imposed upon them.
Operation continues this spirit of collaboration. COPAL is jointly managed by two local organizations – one with decades of experience supporting children with disabilities, and another focused on after-school and sports programmes. Their cooperation ensures that the building remains open and adaptive to community needs. Even after opening, architects and operators hold review meetings to assess use, collect feedback and refine the design. Inclusivity thus remains a living process, not a static goal.
Since its completion in 2020, COPAL has welcomed more than half a million visitors from across Japan and abroad. It is celebrated as a model for inclusive design – a public playground that unites rather than divides. Children play together regardless of ability; parents meet and share experiences; older residents rest, watch and volunteer. The architecture itself becomes a social catalyst, a place where difference becomes connection.
Founded in 2008, o+h has developed a practice defined by empathy and collaboration. Deeply influenced by their volunteer work after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, Maki Onishi and Yuki Hyakuda approach design as an act of care. Their work spans welfare and educational buildings, installations and community projects, all rooted in dialogue and local craft. Each project aims to nurture connection and curiosity through space, using architecture to express respect for difference.
Shelter Inclusive Place COPAL demonstrates how architecture can build empathy through design and participation. It is playful yet deeply human – a place where accessibility feels natural, not exceptional. By turning inclusivity into joy, it shows that public architecture can be both practical and poetic. COPAL embodies what design can achieve when it listens to every voice and makes room for everyone.
The prize money will fund the next chapter in COPAL’s story: transforming its outdoor areas into new inclusive play landscapes. Through a year-long, intergenerational programme, children, students and craftspeople will design and build together using local materials and traditional techniques. These additions will extend COPAL’s inclusive ethos beyond its walls, creating outdoor spaces for learning, play and shared stewardship.
- Information for the project text was provided by onishimaki+hyakudayuki / o+h -
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Advisory Committee Statement
‘Shelter Inclusive Place COPAL’ receives the award for Social Engagement for its exemplary approach to inclusive public space. Located in snowy Yamagata, COPAL is an indoor-outdoor playground that welcomes all children – regardless of ability, nationality or background – into a continuous, barrier-free landscape of play. Its gently curving architecture, inspired by the surrounding mountains, creates a space where everyone can move, rest and explore with ease. The project is awarded for its universal accessibility, sensitivity to context and thoughtful design.