Tonkatsu Tengen
Tokyo, Japan / 2019

“Coating”

The batter bread coating is the real and superb flavor of tonkatsu, a Japanese dish that consists of a breaded deep-fried pork cutlet. It appears to play a crucial role as a heat insulating ingredient that suppresses a rapid increase in temperature of a raw meat at the time of frying it at very high temperatures.

This [coating] brings out the excellent quality of a pork meat and it is an important factor of its deliciousness.

In architecture, cork is considered to be a heat insulating material that plays a role of a coating, the same as butter bread coating in tonkatsu. Therefore, we thought we could wrap the entire space with it as an analogy.

In fact, by creating cork walls, floors, wainscots, counter and lighting fixtures, we completed a pastel soft looking space that resembles a texture of tonkatsu coating.

Designed by Masahiro Yoshida and Kyosuke Maeda
Photos by Keisuke Miyamoto

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Shoten Kenchiku Mar. 2020 issue