Kominka UK

Talks

Talks and writing

Coming up

1 Dec

Lincolnshire County Council

CPD session for the Historic Places team

Talks and visits, 2026

6 Sep

Carpenters Fellowship AGM

3 Sep

Japanese Folk Houses and Their Landscape

Japanese Garden Society National Lecture

11 Jul

FRAME

Carpenters Fellowship · with Andrea Carlson and Kunito Niwa of Kominka Collective, and Koji Toda of Toda Komuten

9 Jul

Hooke Park

Architectural Association, Dorset · with Andrea Carlson and Kunito Niwa of Kominka Collective

7 Jul

With Peter McCurdy

McCurdy & Co, Stratford-upon-Avon · with Andrea Carlson and Kunito Niwa of Kominka Collective

6 Jul

Preservation as Continuity: Protecting Japanese Built Cultural Heritage

Japan Society, Swedenborg Hall, London · with Andrea Carlson and Kunito Niwa of Kominka Collective · Watch the recording · Event photographs, Japan Society

Articles

Mortice and Tenon

Traditional Japanese Timber Framing: Building Bridges Between Japan and the UK

Carpenters Fellowship magazine

Cutting Edge

Keeping the Craft Alive

IOC magazine

Talks can be shaped for heritage groups, craft guilds, garden societies and schools of architecture. CPD sessions are also available for local authority conservation teams, architecture and heritage practices, and building professionals. Invite a talk or CPD session

After the Japan Society talk: guests talking beneath the closing slide with Kominka Collective, Kominka UK and Toda Komuten contacts

Newsletter · Summer 2026

A New Journey Begins

Welcome to the inaugural Kominka UK newsletter! We are thrilled to report that the response to our first UK tour has been far greater than we ever imagined. From our opening lecture at The Japan Society, London through to Stratford-upon-Avon, Hooke Park and The Carpenter’s Fellowship event FRAME, I’d like to thank everyone who attended for their encouragement and curiosity.

Architects, carpenters, foresters, conservation specialists, students, craftspeople and academics, all with a deep curiosity for our shared, built heritage. The conversations which followed often led to remarkably similar questions: How do we build whilst caring for our landscapes? What can we learn from the past as we face the challenges of the future?

Read the full newsletter

Subscribe

To receive news of talks, tours and the buildings a few times a year, email us and we will add you to the list.

Subscribe by email

Talks and visits, 2026

The beginnings of an exchange

Talks, visits and conversations from the first UK tour and since, with students, carpenters, conservation specialists and the wider public. In time we hope this leads to reconstruction projects, where Japanese carpenters and specialists work alongside UK timber framers and builders on site.

Selfie in front of a packed audience in a timber-framed barn
A full house for the Carpenters Fellowship talk at Frame
A Japanese carpenter demonstrating with a wooden rule to students gathered round a table
Demonstrating Japanese carpentry to students at the Architectural Association’s Hooke Park
Visitors looking through a book and Japanese hand tools on a stall under a gazebo
Tools and books on the stand at Frame
Group photograph of visitors and students outdoors among trees
With Architectural Association students at Hooke Park
Three visitors in hard hats on scaffolding beside an exposed wattle-and-daub timber wall
Hall’s Croft, Stratford-upon-Avon, with McCurdy & Co, 7 July 2026
Two visitors in hi-vis examining woven wattle panels in an oak frame
Looking at wattle panels in an English timber frame
Carpenters Fellowship members gathered beneath a large oak-framed gable shelter in a sunny meadow
Under the oak frame at Chelsey Farm · Photo: Oliver Weight
A group gathered in a meadow in front of an open timber-framed shelter dated MMXVIII
Carpenters Fellowship AGM: touring the timber frames at Chelsey Farm, Bristol, 6 September 2026
A group looking round an open-sided timber workshop stacked with boards and beams
Inside the timber workshop at Chelsey Farm

Visit our partners

Kominka Collective kominkacollective.com Toda Komuten todasanchi.com Kominka Preservation Works kominkapreservationworks.com Kominka North America kominkanorthamerica.com