Two years ago, the founders of Airbnb were asking themselves what the company could become, now that its vision of becoming the world’s largest home-share community had come true beyond their wildest expectations. That’s when they happened across a list of the top 10 tech companies of the 1990s. They were stunned–and scared. Nine of those once-hot companies were now floundering or dead, and they had all done everything right. But by simply focusing on their core businesses, each of those startups had allowed competitors to copy them. Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk realized that if they weren’t thinking of what else their business might become, Airbnb would eventually become a dowdy has-been.

Joe Gebbia Matthew Placek

This week, Airbnb is revealing a new division tasked with inventing new futures for the company, called Samara. Airbnb is also unveiling Samara’s first project: a communal housing project designed to revitalize a small town in Japan. That model isn’t meant to be a one-off. After this project, Airbnb will look to scale it to other declining small towns across the world. The idea is that Airbnb could become a force not only in sharing homes, but in urban planning.

The aim is partly to expand Airbnb’s range of products. But the longer vision is that Samara will find other ways to turn both Airbnb and architecture on its head. “What excites me is that we can apply what we learned over the last eight years to create new types of commerce and new types of social change,” says Gebbia, who has devoted much of his energy over the last year getting Samara off the ground–hiring product designers, architects, and even a screenwriter to help storyboard the new experiences they’re trying to create.

Surprising Inspirations And A Stunning Locale

The Japan project was initially inspired by an older woman in rural Japan who started up an Airbnb dwelling in her small city of Tsuyama Okayama. Her neighbors thought she was crazy, and wondered why anyone would visit. But visit they did, attracted by the charms of small-town Japan. That tourist traffic eventually led the woman to enlist her neighbors as hiking guides, translators, and tour guides. What started as a lark had actually brought a miniature tourism economy to a once moribund place.

Fast forward a few months later, when Airbnb was asked to participate in House Vision, a Japanese exhibition that asks companies to pair with architects to present a concept home. “We set off on a journey of many months,” says Gebbia. What they discovered is that the experience of that one woman in rural Japan wasn’t uncommon. Japan is dealing with one of the most rapidly aging populations in the world; that gray wave, when combined with the trend of younger people moving to bigger cities, has hollowed out Japan’s small towns. Doing research for this project, Gebbia visited a village with eight abandoned houses near its center.

That woman’s experience inspired a novel solution. Gebbia’s team worked with architect Go Hasegawa to design a community center where travelers could also stay–thus providing the community with a central meeting point where they could also serve as hosts to tourists. “Hosts get an economic stimulus and something to get excited about,” says Gebbia. “It’s a pathway to get the community to help each other, and it happens to be in the form of architecture.”

A key part of the design is where it will eventually be installed: Yoshino, in the Nara prefecture, which is home to Japan’s most famous cedar forests. That location, and Nara’s strong community of craftsmen, made it relatively easy to source all the building materials locally, from the upholstery to the furniture. On the ground floor, there’s a living room available for community use, a kitchen, and a 16-foot-long center dining table. “Imagine it’s lunch time and you’re eating and at the end of the table there’s a community meeting taking place,” says Gebbia. “I picture Western guests walking up, stepping inside, and you’re interacting with the community from the minute you arrive. If you want to tour the sake factory, or the chopstick factory, or take a hike, the locals are right there.” The building itself sits on a wide, rippling stream, so that visitors can watch fishermen catch fish served in the sushi restaurants down the street. Upstairs are the bedrooms, oriented east-to-west, to track the rising and setting of the sun.