ArchShowcase Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination. OKOMEYA in Tokyo, Japan by Jo Nagasaka / Schemata ArchitectsNovember 27th, 2017 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: Jo Nagasaka / Schemata Architects This rice shop is located on a modest-sized shopping street spanning 300 meters between the main shopping area and Togoshi Koen station.
Owan wanted to open a rice shop, and Schemata Architects was commissioned to renovate a wooden building which used to be a vegetable shop closed in 2014. The building has the typical layout where the shop space faces the street and the residence of the owner is located in the back. The shop space is very narrow, approximately 16.6 m2 in floor area, and they cannot expect to sell a large amount of products there. However, they said, “We don’t need a big shop. We would rather have a modest-sized shop to maintain one-staff operation.” Therefore we planned the shop according to their request. Mutually supporting relationship with the neighboring shops is the key to sustaining this small shop. When the staff has to leave the rice shop briefly, the neighboring shops can keep an eye on the shop. Such “small help” between shops is crucial in maintaining small-sized businesses on local shopping streets; these small shops are supported by the shopping street, and simultaneously the shopping street is reactivated by their success. We intend to propose such mutually supporting relationship in this shop design. The shop design is kept very simple and low-cost. The building was very old and run-down, but we decided to regenerate the old building entirely, as well as the shop space. First we sanded the existing structure such as columns and then sanded the existing wood surface, till it matched the color of new lauan plywood used for furnishings. As a result the overall space gained the refreshed appearance, in which the old and new parts are almost undistinguishable. The shop looks very modest and does not stand out by itself, but we expect to raise people’s expectation by continuously regenerating more shops to enhance the entire street. Category: Shop |