Retail

Located in Kurose-cho, Higashihiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture. The project is the renovation of the direct sales office of Kanemitsu Sake Brewery, which has been in business since 1898. When I first saw the large wall of the sake brewery, a registered tangible cultural property visible from the national highway, I felt as if I were looking at a stratum of layers of the history of sake brewing.

The client wanted to build a house for his family, a bookstore and a guesthouse as a spiritual shelter for the urban kids on a scenic site with Pyeongtaek Lake, as the background, filled with Pampas grass. It seemed like the client who used to run a cram school, felt disgusted with the way he was pushing the young people to the battlefield and always thought that he was getting worn out. Consoled and rewarded by reading books with kids, he decided to realize his dream with us to wrap up the competitive urban life, work on more meaningful things and live healthy.

Getting Up. The beginning of a design can be based on a mood. I envied the tranquility and pleasantness of this city, which is scarce in Shanghai. Suddenly, I decided there should be a cloud, calmly and slowly rising over the river. Clouds have a sophisticated and pure beauty. Rather than perform cosmetic surgery on a collage of cluttered commercial territorial façades, I decided to wrap them in a continuous white perforated aluminum panel wall. The continuous white creates a complex and pure interface on the riverside (by controlling the perforation rate, the façade creates a cloud of layers) hiding the bookstore. The aluminum wall is the façade, or it can be stripped away to become a courtyard enclosure or both. The continuous white aluminum wall is used as an addition to create a serene and pleasant visual subtraction. A cloud rises over the riverside, and the readers of the bookstore are in the cloud. 

Getting Up. The beginning of a design can be based on a mood. I envied the tranquility and pleasantness of this city, which is scarce in Shanghai. Suddenly, I decided there should be a cloud, calmly and slowly rising over the river. Clouds have a sophisticated and pure beauty. Rather than perform cosmetic surgery on a collage of cluttered commercial territorial façades, I decided to wrap them in a continuous white perforated aluminum panel wall. The continuous white creates a complex and pure interface on the riverside (by controlling the perforation rate, the façade creates a cloud of layers) hiding the bookstore. The aluminum wall is the façade, or it can be stripped away to become a courtyard enclosure or both. The continuous white aluminum wall is used as an addition to create a serene and pleasant visual subtraction. A cloud rises over the riverside, and the readers of the bookstore are in the cloud.