nana’s green tea SENDAI PARCO
Miyagi, Japan / 2011

“Seascape”

Nanaha Corporation is a company that introduces “a new form of Japan” to the world through “matcha” (powdered green tea).  They arrange high grade matchas in modern style and provide them as a menu such as matcha latte.  And their intention is to make the space into a “contemporary style tea room”, not a “Japanese style tea room”.

This time I created a contemporary “seascape”.
Shakkei means to characterize a garden by using natural scenery, such as mountains, woods and bamboo groves, around it. Normally, a view that can be taken in a tea room is shakkei, but from the porch of Kanran-tei, which was a tea room of Hideyoshi Toyotomi at the Castle of Fushimi Momoyama and later moved to Miyagi Prefecture by Masamune Date, we are able to look at the sea of Matsushima. Therefore, I have designed nana’s green tea in Miyagi Prefecture into a modern tea room where you can view a “seascape”. What I actually did was set an indirect lighting in the middle of the wall surface to resemble the sea horizon and lined up logs which differ in diameters and graining in the upper and lower parts in order to describe the depth of sea and sky by graduations of various colors and sizes. Moreover, in the logs placed lower than the sea horizon, I gave them a naguri process (a distinct wave pattern) by an adze to express the ripples.

Photos by Keisuke Miyamoto

< PRESS >
Shoten Kenchiku May 2012 Issue
Shoten Kenchiku Mar. 2012 Issue
Shoten Kenchiku Sep. 2011 Issue

< AWARDS >
2012 – The 46th SDA Award – PRIZE WINNER
2012 – DSA Design Award 2012 – PRIZE WINNER
2012 – JCD Design Award 2012 – Best 100