Yukihiro Akama works from a furniture maker’s workshop in Huddersfield, where he is surrounded by the natural world. There, he creates beautifully intricate miniature wooden houses, carving each one from a single piece of wood.

Akama is originally from Japan, where he worked as an architect. He built a traditional timber and mud store house using his mother’s gardening tools. Each work he creates reflects his memories of this intimate process, and represents home, loss, identity and love.

He begins by drawing a sketch on an offcut of oak, walnut, sapele, iroko or maple. Knots in the wood often dictate the starting point for the design, guiding where Akama cuts and carves. Akama uses traditional Japanese tools to create rough surfaces to sit against smooth, and a blow torch to finish. Gradually the wood takes on the appearance of a traditional Asian stilt house – low and long, with a large roof, decorated with clay render and pebbles.