Café in Ujina, Hiroshima designed by IGA|Cafe

The Japanese architecture firm IGArchitects led by Masato Igarashi has recently completed Café in Ujina that stands along the coast in Hiroshima, Japan.

Project description by architect:

Being a café, its structure could also be a gallery, hair salon even a house. This space will broaden possibilities of the users’ life style, and it has strength that will be consistent with any acceptance. This space has been released from services and structure, and it is a possibility of strength and freedom in an architecture form.

image © Toshiyuki Yano

A jungle gym is a playground equipment, but also could be a mountain, observatory, and a small house. It resembles a nature that continue existing there, and it is also like an architecture that can be freely customized. “The perfect architecture” where everything is prepared is somewhat suffocating. A jungle gym carries possibility to change its use while preserving its strength. I think of building an architecture as such.

image © Toshiyuki Yano

The café stands along the coast. The requirements are to make it able to look out the coast from the seating, and to plant a large tree inside. I thought of an architecture with strength that will be consistent with any acceptance, in order to exceed the use of the space as a café and create a place that makes people gather.

image © Toshiyuki Yano

The glass provides openness so people can enjoy their food in nature, the plants inside allows connection between the space inside and outside. The café has a distinctive space for this site, with its small scale that creates coziness and that people can enjoy coffee and the time viewing the coast spreading out before.

image © Toshiyuki Yano

The heights of four slabs are to be set by relationship of surrounding environment, seating arrangement and height of the trees. To view the coast over the embankment, multiple slabs; people’s roof, and trees’ roof, are stacked and making places with many different scales. Inside and outside spaces got inverted along with the movement, and many different “between spaces” with different scales made by slab layers, such as between nature and human made, between inside and outside, are forming gradational environment.

image © Toshiyuki Yano

The simple table formed structure with slabs that prevent rain and wind and supporting columns, has its own independent composition, and the slabs and columns are made to have no relation to the boundary between in and out.

image © Toshiyuki Yano

This space tried to achieve creation of fulfilled atmosphere only by controlling few materials and simple scales. Being a café, its structure could also be a gallery, hair salon even a house. This space will broaden possibilities of the users’ life style, and it has strength that will be consistent with any acceptance. This space has been released from services and structure, and it is a possibility of strength and freedom in an architecture form.

image © Toshiyuki Yano