Yuko Oka is a Paris-born architect and interior designer based in Yokohama, Japan. She earned a Master of Architecture in Interior Design from the Académie Charpentier in Paris. Her professional journey includes a tenure at Arata Isozaki & Associates from 2004 to 2009, followed by the establishment of Oka Architecture Design & Co., Ltd. in 2009.

Oka emphasizes sustainability and innovation in her work. Through CIRCULUS, O.A.D.'s dedicated 3D-printing initiative, she explores circular design and material recycling in architecture. Using a robotic 3D printer, CIRCULUS produces customized architectural elements from recyclable and sustainable materials, allowing for modular, adaptive, and environmentally responsible constructions. This approach not only reduces material waste but also opens new possibilities for complex, site-specific designs that blend artistry with technology.

Her work has received international recognition, including the 25th Hakodate City Landscape Award (2022) and the German Design Award (2018), reflecting her commitment to thoughtful, context-sensitive design.

By combining cultural heritage, contemporary aesthetics, and advanced fabrication technologies, Oka continues to redefine architectural practice, creating meaningful, sustainable spaces that engage both people and the environment.

“My work seeks to weave together technology and craft, where the precision of a robot-arm 3D printer meets the timeless desire to shape space with our hands. At Atelier CIRCULUS, “circle” becomes both name and philosophy: nothing ends, everything returns. What begins as a wall is not fixed in permanence—it may one day be ground into fragments, reborn as another form, another surface, another story.

For this exhibition, I present a wall installation that embodies both technology and craft. The machine builds in strata, each layer resting on the last, like rings of a tree or woven threads of cloth. While the process is guided by algorithms, its outcome carries an organic rhythm, a sense of hand and breath within the mechanical. In this way, digital fabrication becomes less about cold precision and more about the poetics of repetition, continuity, and renewal.

This direction grew out of a moment of pause during the pandemic, when I questioned how architecture could respond to larger social and environmental challenges. Discovering global experiments in earthen 3D printing inspired me to seek a path where buildings are not monuments to permanence but participants in cycles of change.

Through this work, I wish to share an image of architecture as something alive—capable of dissolving, reforming, and returning in new guises. By merging advanced fabrication with the ethos of craft, I hope to open a space where sustainability is not just responsibility, but also beauty, rhythm, and imagination.” - YUKA OKA