JUN KANNA, a Venezuelan-born Japanese architect with roots in Okinawa, Japan, founded ISSHO Architects in 2002. He was selected as one of the representative young designers of Japan in the JAPAN DESIGN+ [Young Designer Japan Representative 20] program in 2010. JUN embarked on a mission to address the unsustainable state of the concrete society in Okinawa and started a project to revitalize the traditional wooden culture by combining research and modernization.
As a result of his research, he built and presented a prototype in 2016, receiving accolades and high recognition, including the Grand Prize in Okinawa Architecture Award in 2018 and the Grand Prize in JIA Environmental Architecture Award in 2019, among others. In recent years, JUN has founded SHINMINKA Villa, a wooden resort business, and initiated collaborative projects with local residents to promote social and economic revitalization in the suburbs and remote islands of Okinawa. Additionally, he has launched village projects with shared forests for architectural materials, exploring processes for cultivating the next generation of wooden culture.