Text description provided by the architects. This is a plan for a roadside store for the eyewear brand “JINS” in Kazo City, Saitama Prefecture. Several rivers of the Tone River system, including the Tone River, flow in the vicinity of the site, and one cannot help but feel the presence of a large river. We wanted to create an architecture that would be in harmony with this large river and its surroundings.
Although the road in front of the building is a new road developed through land readjustment, it is planned to leave a certain area of land from the surrounding rivers and old waterways, so that the shape of the building inevitably gives the impression of a natural river-like flow. While the architecture is arranged to follow the flow, the plan is bent into a dogleg shape so that it is directly opposite a large commercial facility in close proximity.
As you proceed through the tube-shaped space, which is bent in a dogleg shape with repeated steel frames, at the bending points that were previously the interior space becomes the eaves, and conversely, the eaves become the interior, alternating. Here the interior space is at its narrowest, strengthening the connection to the outside.
By installing plants that connect the inside and outside there and providing an entrance that can be passed through from the sidewalk, we aimed to create a space that is easy for people to visit, without any distinction between inside and outside. If you think of the open-ended tubular space as a river, it is like having stepping stones placed where the river narrows, and you can cross from bank to bank by stepping on the stepping stones. In this way, we aimed to create a store space that could be experienced only in this location.
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Project location
Address:Kazo, Japan
Location to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.
About this office
Cite: “JINS Ohtone Store / Tadashi Hirai Design Studio” 28 Jan 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed .
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