Hiroshima Gate Park
Hiroshima Gate Park
TAISEI DESIGN Planners Architects & Engineers
MEP ENGINEERS
Nobuhiro Kowada, Masanori Nemoto, Akira Hoshino
CLIENTS
Joint venture, NTT Urban Development Corporation, Taisei Corporation, Hiroshima Electric Railway Co.,Ltd., The Chugoku Shimbun Co.,Ltd., Hiroshima Bus Center, NTT Urban Value Support, Inc., NTT FACILITIES, INC., Corporation CK・tec, NSP design
STRUCTURA ENGINEERS
Naoki Fujinaga, Ken Yatagai, Hiroto Otaki, Saeko Nakamura
LIGHTING DESIGNERS
Lumimedia Lab
LANDSCAPE DESIGNERS
Shinichi Kaburagi, Ako Fujisawa, Mitsuru Ogura
MANUFACTURERS
TAJIMA ROOFING, TOKAI COLOR, Taiyo Kogyo
DESIGN TEAM
Mitsuhiro Hattori, Yuta Tsuneda, Takehiro Honda
LEAD ARCHITECTS
Mitsuhiro Hattori, Yuta Tsuneda
PHOTOGRAPHS
Kenchikusya, NEW HIROSHIMA GATEPARK, DRONE CREATE Co.,Ltd.
CONTRACTORS
Taisei Corporation
AREA
4741 m²
YEAR
2023
LOCATION
Hiroshima, Japan
CATGORY
Restaurants & Bars, Park, Community
HANDING DOWN MEMORIES AND SHAPING AN OUTDOOR CULTURE
The project site, which is located on the north side of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, is the former location of the Hiroshima Civic Stadium, a symbol of post-war restoration.
Working with the joint venture selected through the Park–PFI (Park–Private Finance Initiative) program, we formulated a policy of turning the former ballpark site into a place to stimulate activity—a place that creates lively daily activities and stimulates people to go out by shaping an outdoor culture (Osoto Bunka) for enjoying outdoor activities while handing down the deeply marked history of the site to future generations.
Designed to form a three-ring skeleton consisting of an event plaza, a shop zone, and a green belt, Hiroshima Gate Park has an event space at its center, a number of surrounding shops, and a green belt that forms a perimeter zone.
The park is designed to remind people of the scale of the ballpark by tracing its outline and to hand down the memories of the ballpark by reproducing memorabilia such as the home plate at its original location and using grandstand seating remnants as benches.
Adjoining the skeleton is a promenade that visually marks the Axis of Peace from the Peace Memorial Park.
At the north end of the promenade is a cascaded hill provided with playground equipment, intended to form a landscape that helps children ensure world peace in the future of which the late architect Kenzo Tange used to dream.
When drawing up architectural plans, it was necessary to make sure that none of the adjacent buildings would be visible when viewing the Atomic Bomb Dome from the Peace Memorial Park.
There was also an initial cost constraint from the point of view of depreciation under the provisions of the Park–-PFI regulations because the buildings were supposed to be demolished 20 years after the commencement of construction work.
To solve these problems, we decided to go with separate low-story wooden structures as shop buildings. A total of eight shops were planned.
Out of those buildings, five were designed to have a total floor area not exceeding 500 m2 so as to avoid fire resistance restrictions within a quasi-fire prevention zone,
and the remaining three buildings were designed to meet the (b)-1 quasi-fire resistance construction requirements under the Building Standards Act so that no part of their structural frames are burnable.
These design details made it possible to realize cost-effective buildings that can be built only with commercially available materials and that can be demolished easily.
The shop exteriors were built with tree-shaped wood columns to form under-eave spaces that are harmonious with the park landscape, and the shop owners were encouraged to commercially utilize the outdoor space.
A large roof was provided at the intersection of the shop group and the Axis of Peace in order that the roof can be used in close association with the shops.
Ribbon-shaped benches were provided between the event plaza and the shops to achieve a gradual transition between the park and the commercial facilities.
