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Architects: Naruse Inokuma Architects
- Area: 357 m²
- Year: 2018
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Photographs:Masao Nishikawa
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Manufacturers: Alfa Studio, BOAT, Granpa, InterOffice, Sawai Orimono
Text description provided by the architects. This design was for a shop annexed to a cable car station at the top of Mount Takao, a tourist destination near Tokyo that has been awarded three stars on the Michelin Green Guide Japan. Before our renovation, there were rows of shop entrances lining the road from the station to the mountain trail. Each of these shops was small and detached from one another, and the souvenir shops were not benefiting from the customers flowing into the café and restaurant.
The street in front of the building is 40m long, on an incline that rises 1.8m. We, therefore, decided to make use of this feature to design the interior comprehensively with the street. As a result, the interior contains three levels that gradually rise up to house souvenir shops, a restaurant, and a café space.
The length of the building facing the street is lined with sliding doors that can be fully opened on nice days to connect the building with the outdoors. In this building, we took what was once a rowhouse-style building that did not fit the demands of the times and re-envisioned it in the primitive terms of the topography of Mount Takao.
