Concept:
Yusuhara Machino-eki is a complex of a market selling local products and a small hotel with 15 rooms. Combining the two different functions via atrium, a new core facility was born for the town of 3,900 inhabitants in the mountains.
Photo Takumi Ota
Yusuhara is widely known as the town facing a main road used by Sakamoto Ryoma, a high-minded warrior of the region who contributed to the initiation of the Meiji Restoration (a big political reform in the end of 19th century). Along the road, there existed a number of greenrooms called “Chad Do” for travelers, which functioned not only as restrooms but also as a kind of cultural salon, serving teas free of charge. As an attempt to respect this history, we used thatch as the material, which is deeply related to “Cha Do” which worked as a medium to connect the past with the present.
Glass fittings are used for the lower part of the building, including the market’s entrance facing the front road, which can be open at any hour of the day, and on top of it come piles of the straw unit in the module of 2,000×980mm, an unprecedented form for a curtain wall. Normally in a thatched roofing, thatch is fixed vertically against the foundation, in which its cut ends face towards outside. In this building, however, the bunch of thatch is bound horizontally to the foundation, with which the cut end won’t be exposed to rainfalls, and will last long. As another device, pivots are set on the steel mullion at the both ends of each thatch unit, so that it can rotate and take in fresh air from outside, which will make the maintenance of the thatch easier.
Photo Takumi Ota
For the interior, we used logs of cedar tree with some remained astringent skin. The remain of the astringent was controlled by the pitch of the bark peeler, so that some nuance was added to their texture. Using rough-textured materials, such as thatch and log, we tried to create an interpretation of contemporary Yusuhara.
Site plan [Kengo Kuma & Associates]
Ground floor plan [Kengo Kuma & Associates]
Second floor plan [Kengo Kuma & Associates]
Section [Kengo Kuma & Associates]
Detailed section [Kengo Kuma & Associates]
Elevation [Kengo Kuma & Associates]
Thatched wall detail [Kengo Kuma & Associates]
Location：1196-1 Yusuhara, Yusihar-Cho, Takaoka-gun, Koch, Japan
Client：Tomio Yano, Town Mayor of Yusuhara
Type of Project：new construction
Principal Use：Hotel and market
Design and Supervision：Kengo Kuma & Associates
Structure：Main structure/reinforced concrete Pile or Foundation / Direct foundation
Number of Stories：3 stories above
Site：779.08m2
Built area：552.28m2
Total area：1,132.00m2
Floor area for each storey：1F：446.68m2 2F：342.66m2 3F：342.66m2
Height of stories：1F：3,400mm 2F:3.00m 3F: 3,200mm
Height of ceilings: 1F shopping area: 7,560～8,900mm guest room：2,500mm
Maximum height: 10,480mm
Maximum eave height：10,040mm
Supervision Co-operator：Ks Design
Structure：Katsuo Nakata & Associates
Utilities, Equipment：Sigma Facility Design
Construction：Daio Shin-yo (building) Ventilation and Hygiene/Yondenko
Lighting：Nisssan Eletric
Design Period：2009.08～2009.11
Construction Period：2009.12～2010.7
Construction cost (including facilities)：360,259,200JPY
Opening hours：Market 8：30-18：00 (17:00 in winter)
