Hasta La Ideas

A curving chasm slices off the corner of this showroom building in western Tokyo to create a passageway to its entrance.

Completed by Japanese architects Tsutomu Hasegawa of Be-Fun Design and Takato Tamagami in 2008, the five-storey-high concrete block contains galleries and a workplace for textile company Sunwell.

Glass bridges cross the narrow, timber-lined alleyway on the three upper levels, leading to small triangular meeting rooms.

On the ground floor, a staircase leads down to a basement with high ceilings, where the company host events.

This is the second product showroom we’ve featured on Dezeen this month – see our recent story about a timber showroom concealed behind gauzy black curtains.

Photography is by Masaya Yoshimura.

Here’s some more text from Takato Tamagami:

Sunwell Muse Kita-sando

This is a building of a textile planning and trading company which handles the entire process from the production to retail.

The site is well located on the corner plot near the fashionable city “Harajuku”.

The client had been focusing on female apparel business, so the concept of our building design which is a metaphor of female beauty was suitable for them to put across their corporate identity.

The components that characterises this architecture are the two curved surface walls which dominate the entire space.

These two walls form a shortcut path which connects the roads in front of each side of the corner plot.

This path which looks like a narrow alley or the bottom of a ravine leads visitors inside the building, to the event hall in the basement and the showrooms on the first and second floors.

The curves used in the elevation surfaces on the north side and the east side represent those of a female body.

The graceful curved surface walls were created by connecting the curves with a straight line.

These curved walls are used as a motif of this architecture, and you can see them not only in the façade but also in the internal spaces on each floor.

Use: show room, event hall, office
Client: Sunwell Group

Architect: Takatotamagami Architectural Design/Takato Tamagami + Be-Fun Design/Tsutomu Hasegawa
Location: Sendagaya, Shibuya-Ku, Tokyo, Japan

Date of completion: 29th, February, 2008
Structure: reinforced concrete structure + steel structure

Exterior wall materials: custom-made stucco/ timber pine natural resin varnish finish
Roof materials: seat waterproofing

Interior wall materials: concrete finish/ timber pine natural resin varnish finish / plasterboard EP
Interior floor materials: calcium silicate board/ cement plastering

Building area: 221m2
Total floor area: 992m2