La Collina Ōmihachiman, main shop "Grass Roof" (草屋根)

The Taneya confectionery group built La Collina Ōmihachiman on the site of a former holiday centre, on an estate of roughly eleven hectares. The name is Italian for "the hill"; an Italian architect and designer who came to visit the land chose it after the view from a small rise. For the design, the head of the group proposed two images to Terunobu Fujimori, which the same Italian architect, engaged by the group to oversee the design, had settled on after seeing the site: terraced rice fields and a green hill. Fujimori saw a garden in the terraces and a grass roof in the green hill, and shaped the roof so as not to spoil the view of Mount Hachimanyama behind it. He shares the design credit with Hiroshi Nakatani.

The shop opened on 9 January 2015. Fujimori went on to design the group's head office, a castella shop and a covered walkway on the same site, arranged around a central rice paddy.

In 2020 the Japan Art Academy gave its prize for fiscal year 2019 to Fujimori for this work. It noted the care taken over everything, from the garden and surroundings to the posts, beams and furniture, down to every tree and blade of grass.

Visitors approach along a path laid with kumazasa, a kind of dwarf bamboo, at the end of which stands a large roof covered entirely in turf, with Mount Hachimanyama rising behind it. Under the eaves, 110 rolls of turf were made and fixed in November 2014, under Fujimori's direction, by employees of the group, contractors and students.

The roof changes with the seasons: the turf, brown during its winter rest, starts growing again in spring, grows most in summer, then loses its green in autumn. Plants carried by the wind and by birds have also taken root on it by themselves; they are not pulled out, and the group's staff look after them along with the turf.

Inside, the top of the central void is decorated with charcoal: Fujimori and the staff glued on charcoal fragments to form a ceiling. The lime-plastered walls are made uneven to soften the reflection of sound.

The site's main shop holds two sections: on the left as you enter, Taneya's Japanese confectionery (wagashi), including the whole of the house's range, and on the right the Western pastries of Club Harie, a brand of the same group.

A café occupies the upper level, devoted to dorayaki. Its tables and chairs in old chestnut wood, its lighting and all its interior fittings were designed by Fujimori.

Entry is free; the shop is open from 9 am to 6 pm. From JR Ōmihachiman station, a bus reaches the entrance to the site in about ten minutes; by car, allow about thirty minutes from the nearby expressway interchanges.