After reading about Professor Jane Marie-Law’s research in Japan working with small-scale religious communities to inform sustainable practices in ecology, I wanted to get involved as an architecture student to document and research on the architecture, specifically the Minka, Japanese farmhouses, within their community to understand the relationship between nature, people and culture. The Minka’s dense packed straw roof and its structure, allow for ecologies that exist in the surrounding environment to find a home. The walls, the ground, and the roofs of the house are habitats not only for humans but for mice, insects, mushrooms and more. Currently there are large efforts to preserve these structures and as an architecture student I’m interested in this act of preservation as well.