Tokyo | B3 Designers

31/10

Sajilo Cafe, Tokyo

Sajilo Cafe is an unassuming, quiet restaurant and cafe that serves up Nepali food and drink in Kichijoji, Tokyo. The modest, whimsical interior is unpretentious and has an unfinished look that seems as if it has been evolving into its current state over centuries.

The plain interior is filled with a collection of quirky bric-a-brac, along with charming glassware and wire dinnerware. This creates an extremely personal, relaxed looking space, almost like a friend’s dining room.

Windowsills are filled with arrangements of succulents in old tins and ceramics, continuing the nostalgic mood to the outside of the cafe. The owners obviously have a good eye for the old world items they fill their cafe with: they also run Atelier Sajilo, where similar items are stocked in abundance.

(Images via thisisnaive)

01/01

'Mr_Design Office' by Schemata Architecture Office

Who wouldn’t want to work in this office? ‘Mr_Design Office’ by Japanese studio Schemata is a 190 m2 office for 5 people in Tokyo. With the intention of keeping the space open while still maintaining a level of privacy and warmth, the project incorporates noninvasive design elements with playful components. In order to avoid separating the single room into a number of smaller rooms, the design purposely lacks complete partitions and dividers.

A meeting area on the south end of the rectangular layout is flanked on one side by a mirrored surface to lengthen the space. The partial-height wall unit which houses the washroom and storage space features a built-in tube slide for the employees. To provide a level of privacy, the conference table is placed under a parabolic reflector with a 3.4m diameter. In addition to funneling light, the suspended fixture collects and directs sounds to the meeting area. In order to have a subtle presence, the overhead lights are constructed from spiral tubes cut in half to mimic the aesthetics of the ceiling ducts.

The bench in the waiting area is made from four separate chairs with clear epoxy feet to give the illusion of floating.

All Images courtesy Schemata Architecture Office

Photographer: Takumi Ota

Via designboom

22/12

AESOP AOYAMA SHOP BY SCHEMATA ARCHITECTURE

Japanese architect Jo Nagasaka of Schemata Architects has designed the interior of the first Aesop shop in Aoyama, Tokyo. Mainly built from materials found in an abandoned house in nakano-ku due for demolition, the space is minimal and contemporary whilst possessing the warmth and richness of traditional Japanese design.

Aesop’s range of hair and skincare products sit on bundles of timber taken from the abandoned ‘murazawa’ house and wooden panels from the house are reincarnated as neatly stacked display shelves. The best thing about this project is the attention to detail, clearly fuelled by a deep appreciation of raw everyday materials and the glimpses of past uses they reveal. Blank surfaces are defined by small details of the shops skeleton. Much like a Rachel Whiteread sculptures, channels are dug around water pipes and manholes in the floor and filled with epoxy resin and lighting cables are exposed and arranged in linear patterns, like delicate drawings.

via designboom images

26/11

CORNFIELD BY RYUJI NAKAMURA

An installation by Japanese architect Ryuji Nakamura is being exhibited at the museum of modern art, Tokyo. Constructed entirely of paper and glue, the delicate structure is over 53.9 m2 with the longest side measuring 16m and the whole installation the height of an average person. Nakamura designed the installation so it can never be viewed in its entirety.

The lines of paper are meticulously attached to one another to create a lace-like structure with a weightless appearance. Cornfield sits like a low, fine mist in the gallery space and the complex geometry allows tiny glimpses through to the other side of the room. With its complexity and subtlety, Cornfield is a stunning piece of design.

Images via Designboom

15/11

TOKYO LLOVE HOTEL, POP UP HOTEL

This pop-up hotel in Tokyo is based on the phenomenon of the Japanese love hotel. Designed by eight Japanese and eight Dutch designers, each room is a unique installation which visitors can actually pay to stay in. Each designer has responded to the theme to create a room for every mood!

The pop-up hotel, initiated by Amsterdams’ Lloyd hotel, celebrates 400 years of trade and cultural relations between Japan and the Netherlands, using theme ‘still in Llove’ as it’s driver. The entrance area and cafe see the two cultures collide in bold graphic wall coverings including images of windmills, mount fuji and historical figures who symbolise love, designed by Thonik.

Highlights of the hotel include this ‘clockwork’ room by designer, Joe Nagasaka. The ricepaper from the traditional screens was removed leaving just the frames, adding to the mechanical aesthetic and the bed is mounted on a rotating disk, to be turned at the occupants will.

Another favourite of mine, room no. 304 by Riyuji Nakamara features a ‘water line’ out of fishing line creating the feeling of being underwater throughout the room, especially when lying on the bed as plastic toys float above you.

Photographs by Takumi Ota

The brief has inspired some exciting responses from the designers. Other rooms popular with visitors include a pebble filled room with trees in place of furniture by Yuko Nagayama and a pink and white room with the theme of fertility by Scholten&Baijings.

Image via Designboom

15/10

Switch by Yuko Shibata

Can living space be truly flexible? Many a designer has attempted to overcome the limitations of cramped urban living with all manner of sliding, swinging and folding partitions but none as neatly and simply as Japanese designer Yuko Shibata.

Just two mobile walls create separate living and working areas in this Tokyo apartment, cleverly named ‘Switch’. One partition slides out over the dining table to create a meeting room on one side and library on the other. The second bookcase pivots round at the end of the day to reveal a bedroom.

The designer says:

It was the owner’s intent that the floor plan could be changed to completely separate the living and office sections. This request was rendered impossible, due to the original structure being of box frame type reinforced concrete construction, with almost all walls acting as supporting building frames. The addition of two bookshelves, each with a large door, allowed us to create a space with the ability to adapt from home to office or from office to home, while leaving the original floor plan intact.

Photos via Indecorat

10/06

24 Issey Miyake Shop by Nendo

Based on the concept of the Japanese convenience store, 24 ISSEY MIYAKE shops combine inexpensive prices, a large variety of colours and frequent changes in product lineup. The Miyake team wanted a new design concept for the 24 Issey Miyake shop in Shibuya’s Parco shopping complex, which includes a store that specially features Miyake’s new Bilbao bag.

The Bilbao bag has no set form. Instead, it settles depending on how it is placed. To match the bag, we abandoned the standard hard, flat and smooth fixtures found in most shops, and created a set of variable-height fixtures made of thin steel rods that stand like a field of prairie grass in the shop, with a similar vague, undefined shape like the bag.

Shelving and hanger rods are also made of steel rods, in the 7 mm diameter common to all of the 24 Issey Miyake shop interiors. Supported by ‘points’, rather than by surfaces or lines, the bags seem to waft in the air like flowers in a light breeze, creating the illusion of a field of flowers in the store.

18/03

PhoneBook by Mobile Art Lab

A wonderful new idea for an iPhone app that enhances the interaction with chilrens’ books: PhoneBook was presented by the Mobile Art Lab in Tokyo. Unfortunately there is no text to be found in a language that I was able to understand (only Japanese, sorry). But if you watch this little video there is no need for any further explanation – just press play and enjoy.

16/02

Mental Health Clinic in Akasaka, Tokyo by Nendo

Japanese designers Nendo have completed the interior of a mental health clinic in Akasaka, Tokyo, where none of the doors open and patients and staff instead move around the building by opening sections of the walls. Called MD.net Clinic Akasaka, the project includes sliding bookcases behind which the consultation rooms can be found and a single opening door at the end of the corridor that reveals a window to the outside.

Rather than getting patients back to a ‘zero’, a neutral starting place, the traditional model for mental health care, the clinic aims to provide patients with something extra: a further richness in their daily lives that they did not have before starting treatment. The interior design is an attempt to express this philosophy in space. The ‘doors’ that line the walls of the clinic do not open, and ‘ordinary’ parts of the walls open up into new spaces. The consultation rooms are entered by sliding the bookshelves sideways. The door at the end of the hallway opens onto a window; the amount of light in the hallway is controlled by opening and closing the door. By providing alternate perspectives for viewing the world, and avoiding being trapped by pre-existing perceptions, the interior allows visitors–and staff members–to experience opening new doors in their hearts, one after the other.

Via Dezeen

10/09

Nature Factory by Makoto Tanijiri

Diesel Denim Gallery Aoyama in Tokyo, Japan is presenting a store installation “nature Factory” by Makoto Tanijiri of Hiroshima architects Suppose Design Office. The installation uses plastic plumbing pipes and joints to create a series of tree-like forms inside the store.

Denim as recognised work clothes formerly has, at times, shown different expressions as fashion items to the people. Equally, a group of plumbing, usually unnoticed, shows completely different expressions under the name of “Nature Factory”. The complex plumbing, trailing by the wall in all directions will cover all over the space. It is like a tree grown over a long time. An atmosphere like a natural arbor is created in the space covered with artificial plumbing.

Diesel Denim Gallery Ayoama holds art installations twice a year on the 1st floor, and art exhibitions four times a year, featuring different artists on each floor. The installation runs until 31 January 2010.

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26/02

Diesel Denim in Tokyo

Light Weight

Diesel Denim Gallery outlets in New York and Tokyo serve as both signature boutiques and exhibition spaces for the work of young creatives.

The space has two levels. The first one shows every six months new installations from local artists and the second floor gallery showscases four different artworks a year, also by local artists.

Diesel Denim in Tokyo mixes fashion with the exhibition of a series of installations, such as architect Ayako Maruta’s illuminated arches.

Combining the artist’s work with the fashion collection turns the space into an art object.

Maruta’s illuminated arches floating in midair stop short of the ground and the light gives a tree-dimensional view of the space.

In Interior Design the light is fundamental to create
good spaces. For instance, at Cinnamon Kitchen designed by B3 Designers silver-plated perforated handmade lamps throw shadows on the walls reflected in the mirrors that line the walls shaping geometric shadows everywhere.

25/02

Tokujin Yoshioka's Waterfall Bar Review By B3 Designers

Tokujin Yoshioka’s Waterfall Bar in Tokyo

Situated in private house in Tokyo, the waterfall bar is another example of Yoshioka’s talent and eye for materials.
Covering the facade of the space is the work of Olafur Eliasson, the entire surface is made from what looks like black, shiny crystal which creates shimmering reflections and a deeply textured surface.
On the inside, the main feature of the space is Yoshioka’s 4.2m long solid glass bar top (which weighed 1000kg). The surface of the bar top looks slightly rippled and looking at it, one really gets the impression of looking into a pool of water. As with the facade, the play of light and reflections is one of the important features of this piece, with colourful reflections dappling the walls and floor.