KARAHORI KAWARAYAEN – Phase I | ZEROKOBO DESIGN

Project Name : KARAHORI KAWARAYA-EN – Phase I
Location : Osaka,Japan
Designer : Yunagi Miki
Lighting designer : Shingo Ishidou
Copper designer : Rie Yamasaki
Iron designer : Hirotaka Yamanaka
Logo designer : Yuka Takakuwa
Mural painting : SPACE DESIGN COLLEGE
Photographer : Stirling Elmendorf

There is an area called Karahori within a 30-minute walk to the south of Osaka Castle. The history of Karahori goes back to the time when Toyotomi Hideyoshi built the original Osaka Castle. The name of the area comes from the outer dry moat, or karahori (lit. “empty moat”), which encircled the inner water-filled moat along the perimeter of the castle. Karahori flourished as the central district of Osaka during the Edo period, when the city developed rapidly as the so-called “tenka no daidokoro” (“kitchen of the nation”). While many of Osaka’s historical buildings were lost to the air raids of World War II, Karahori miraculously managed to escape unscathed. Numerous old buildings that convey a sense of the city’s history have thus survived in the area to this day. Although central Osaka now seems to be losing its distinctive allure as more and more buildings with historic value are being lost to rapid development, I have given careful consideration to how I should approach this project to renovate a 45-year-old multi-use commercial and residential building in the historically important area of Karahori.

 Others before me have been conducting various community development projects in Karahori through revitalizing shopping arcades, renovating townhouses, and organizing art events. A variety of unique studios, galleries, and shops have also been opened in the area. A commercial facility called So stands across from the project site. It occupies a renovated townhouse and is famous for its grass-covered roof. There seem to be many people who are drawn to the distinctive ambience of the building, as there are always streams of people taking photographs of it even on weekdays. In view of the site’s context and the special character of the location, the client and I thought together about how we could give the building a symbolic quality as a new cultural base that would express qualities of “Karahori-ness” and “Osaka-ness”. Kawarayamachi, the specific neighborhood in which the project site is located, has historically been home to tile shops because of the good quality of clay found in the area. It is said that the present roads have been laid down directly over the quarried earth, and this is evinced by the uneven terrain of the area. There are also still many old houses with ceramic tile roofs in Karahori today. After seeing the sight of these beautifully mottled roofs covered in the gently curved Japanese tiles, I came up with an idea to employ copper sheeting—another material used on roofs and walls from long ago—to create an organic façade composed with an iconic freeform surface.

I attempted an “ultra hands-on approach” for the design and construction process of the curved surface in view of the fact that I could not communicate the image I held in my mind to the construction site accurately through two-dimensional design drawings and also in view of cost issues. I defined the form of the surface at the time of installing the substructure through holding many meetings with the construction team that tailored the standard copper sheets on site. However manual and unrefined this approach may have been, I believe that forms are imbued with life through work that leaves traces of the human hand. The curved surface, which brings to mind a skirt dancing in the wind, serves as a lantern at night by emitting a gentle light from its bottom edge. I am counting on the material that has a raw appeal to it to weather over the years so that the façade will take on a new yet also old feel and contribute to adding new life not only to this multi-use building but also the Karahori area as a whole. I am also hoping that the project will come to be seen as a successful model of a private initiative aimed at contributing to the historic neighborhood, realized at a time when the number of government-funded revitalization projects in the area has been in decline.