Hasta La Ideas

Chunky wooden columns and beams support the sloping timber ceiling of this small pharmacy by Japanese studio Ninkipen! in the city of Ogaki (+ slideshow).

Osaka architects Ninkipen! designed the pharmacy for a plot in front of a hospital and chose to let the building’s facade signal its presence to patients, rather than employing typical neon signs.

“We considered how the architecture itself could become a symbol in the town, but unlike other pharmacies filling the streets with big, showy graphic signage,” explained the architects.

The underside of the building’s long pitched roof is clad in timber to create an expansive, warm surface that can be seen through the full-height windows and is intended to welcome visitors entering the pharmacy from the street.

The roof’s low eaves correspond to those of neighbouring buildings, while grass planted on top will eventually cover the entire surface.

A skylight in the middle of the ceiling brings additional daylight into the reception area, as well as to a raised walkway beneath the roof on the upper storey.

The exposed wooden trusses supporting the roof contrast with black metal bracing rods and the black electrical cords from which bare pendant bulbs are suspended.

The dispensing desk is also clad in timber to maintain a consistency of materials throughout the interior.

Photography is by Hiroki Kawata.

Here’s a short project description from Ninkipen!:

O Dispensing Pharmacy

This is a new construction for a pharmacy in front of a general hospital.We considered how the architecture itself could become a symbol in the town, but unlike other pharmacies filling the streets with big, showy graphic signage.

A single sloping roof you can see from the street is made of timber and it will be completely covered with grass in a few years. We lowered the edge of the eaves like the surrounding eaves and made the ceiling continue from there to the second floor with a truss with steel diagonal rods. You can look around to the sky on the other side when you enter the pharmacy.

We think the warm timber ceiling on the back of the roof will gently greet the people coming in for medicine. We are happy if citizens remember this as ‘the Wood Roofed Pharmacy’ and for them this becomes a virgin landscape of pharmacy.

Architect: Yasuo Imazu / ninkipen!
Stractual engineer: Yosiki Mondo
Use: dispensing pharmacy
Location: Ogaki city, Japan

Site area: 177.00m2
Building area: 106.50m2
Total floor area: 172.14m2

The post Ninkipen! exposes wooden columns
and trusses inside O Pharmacy appeared first on Dezeen.

This tiny gabled pharmacy is squeezed into a narrow alleyway between two towering apartment blocks in Osaka.

Japanese architects Yasuo Imazu of Ninkipen!, Toshikatsu Ienari and Kenta Fukunishi collaborated to design the project, under the collective identity TKY Japan.

Behind the glazed facade, an exposed skeleton of wooden columns and rafters surrounds the building’s long, thin interior.

A wood and steel staircase at the back of the pharmacy leads up to a mezzanine, positioned above an enclosed office.

You can see more projects by Ninkipen! here, including a bakery with an exposed concrete counter.

Photography is by Hiroki Kawata.

Here’s some more explanation from Yasuo Imazu:

This is a new construction of a Pharmacy, in the center of Osaka city area of Japan.

The site once used to be a farm road. When the World War II ended, a small house was built on the road and stayed there illegally for several ten years. After the house was removed, the site then became a residential land.

In front of this newly built pharmacy, there are remains of a sidewalk, which define an original function of the site used to have, thus the building is set back.

That the site was a road, and that there was a small illegally-built house, were the two historical contexts we valuated as the uniqueness of the site.

The form of the building follows the shape of the site with a gabled roof on top which realizes the simplest form of a house. The continuous ceiling which visually creates almost a linear perspective reflects the linear shape of the site, the path or the road.

Though it is surrounded by volumetric urban buildings, we kept the minimum volume of a single story house, recalling a persisting memory of the site, the little house.

The structure is consisted of simple steel-frame which allows the wood columns and rafters to be exposed, thus provides warm and intimate atmosphere to the customers.

Project name: Ogimachi Global Dispensing Pharmacy
Architect: TKY JAPAN（Toshikatsu Ienari, Kenta Fukunishi, Yasuo Imazu/ninkipen!

Use: dispensing pharmacy
Location: Osaka, Japan

Design: 2010.12〜2011.7
Construction: 2011.8〜2011.11

Site area: 96.22m2
Building area: 61.94m2
Total floor area: 61.94m2

Greek studio KLab Architecture created this pharmacy in Athens by wrapping a round facade punctured by Braille lettering over the existing octagonal building, with plants occupying the space in between.

The two levels of the Placebo Pharmacy are linked by a long ramp that curls round one side of the circular plan.

A shop and dispensing chemist are housed on the ground floor with offices and a surgery for visiting practitioners above.

Bespoke display cabinets in the shop downstairs radiate outwards from a central cash desk.

More about KLab Architecture on Dezeen »

Photographs are by P. Kokkinias.

The information below is from the designers:

The design process for this large (600m2) super-local pharmacy forced us to shift our viewpoint and come up with a virtual building—a placebo pharmacy. The octagonal shape of the existing structure was re-formed into a cylinder in order to create a spiral which seeks to converse with the rapid motion on Vouliagmenis Avenue, the urban artery on which the building stands.

The panels of the façade are perforated using Braille, which both alludes to the system’s use on pharmaceutical packaging and boosts visibility by allowing the light to find its way into the interior. The new facade also protects the interior while acting as a lure for passers-by. Inside, the product display mirrors the circular frontage, while a ramp up to the upper level extends the dynamism of the exterior spiral into the interior space.

The Pharmacy is arranged over two floors, the ground floor being the primary shop space with the upper mezzanine floor consisting of ancillary office space used as a temporary surgery for visiting health professionals.

The pharmacy is arranged in plan in a radial pattern with the main cashiers desk acting as the focal point. The product displays fan out from this focal point giving the cashier the ability to view the whole pharmacy from this central area. The drug dispensary, preparation areas and toilets are also arranged off this radial pattern. This pattern gives a natural flow to the space and allows light deep into the center of the plan at all times throughout the day.

Principal architect: Konstantinos Labrinopoulos
Façade artistic implementation: Xara Marantidou
Design team: Enrique Ramirez, Mark Chapman, Kostis Anagnostakis
Images credit: P. Kokkinias

See also:

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Pharmacy in Koukaki by KLab Architecture	Be Clinique by Openlab Architects	GKK Dental Ambulatory by Xarchitecte