Kanayama Community Center
KANAYAMA COMMUNITY CENTER
Kengo Kuma & Associates
ARCHITECTS
Kengo Kuma & Associates
PHOTOGRAPHS
Takeshi Yamagishi
AREA
3318.69 m2
YEAR
2009
LOCATION
Japan
CATEGORY
Museum, Community Center
Text description provided by architect.
The site is located at the foot of Kanayama Castle, known for its beautiful stone wall and stone pavement. It is a community center incorporating guidance facilities for this historic place and a workshop for local residents to learn handicraft and dyeing.
The site is divided at near the center by a 6m difference in levels. Bearing this physical feature in mind, it was designed to form a lane loosely connecting the two facilities, taking in a sense of distance towards its rich surrounding nature.
Technically, volume of the two-story community center is replaced by a breast wall, and is connected on the 2nd level to the guidance facility via ‘community square’ on the 2nd floor, thus providing a circulative layout. The entire architecture therefore is the breast wall.
The exterior wall is a thin and light screen, a transformation of the ‘stone wall’ that characterizes the historic spot. Stone is fit in the steel plate supporting the load of the entrance porch, so that a feel of calmness and strength can be added to the semi open-air space.
There are two types of shapes in the stone, determined by the weight that can be carried by one person, and they are developed in a regular pattern to gain a sense of lightness, seeking a symbol born from the pattern.
For the ceiling of the interior also, cement excelsior board and rectangular panel were layered in top and bottom and plastered in a pattern, giving varied degrees so that its fractionalization and spatial gaps would develop in three-dimension. It is an attempt to link the material and the space by patterns.
