Figure - Ground / Studio Takuya Hosokai

Figure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - Exterior PhotographyFigure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - Interior PhotographyFigure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - Interior Photography, ChairFigure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - Interior Photography, Windows, FacadeFigure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - More Images+ 14

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Figure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - Exterior Photography
© Naomichi Sode

Text description provided by the architects. A beauty salon in a provincial city.  The project took 8 months from design to completion. The site, about a 10-minute drive from the city center, is located in a quiet neighborhood that was converted to a residential area in 1927.  When we visited the site for the first time, we felt that there are many buildings in this area that are composed of multiple small volumes in an inconsistent physical scale, such as an entrance, a bay window, a terrace, a warehouse, and a garage. In addition, although the buildings are reasonably tall, the streetscape has an intimate sense of scale because its composition allows the line of sight to pass through to the open sky.

Figure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - Interior Photography
© Naomichi Sode

Proposing a simple shape for the building on this site, such as a cube, would have emphasized its formal symbolism and made the building feel awkward in relation to the city. Therefore, we devised the beauty salon in the form of multiple volumes that have the same physical and intimate scale as the surrounding environment. Modeling from the program - First of all, we sought to create a space surrounded by soft and homogeneous indirect light because the program is a hair salon. 

Figure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - Interior Photography, Chair
© Naomichi Sode
Figure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - Image 18 of 19
Plan
Figure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - Interior Photography
© Naomichi Sode

Since the site is adjacent to a road on the north side, the openings take full advantage of this aspect to ensure a soft and consistent light internally.  The site is long and narrow, and in order to obtain natural light at the back of the building, the shape of the building gradually expands from the front to the back, both in plan and elevation. If we differentiate the program of a beauty salon, it can be divided into three categories: waiting, cutting hair, and washing the head.  Because the quality of light required for each of these three activities is different, we decided to divide the space into three separate zones even though they are one sequence. 

Figure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - Interior Photography
© Naomichi Sode

Therefore, we created three volumes: a waiting room, a cutting area, and a shampoo area; two more volumes were added to the program: a staff room and a gallery.  The interdigitation of these five volumes creates a sequence of spaces, even though each space is divided from the next. The town's hair salon with figure and ground composition - As a beauty salon, it is desirable to protect the privacy of its customers, simultaneously providing them with an appropriate sense of openness and security. In order to open up the building on a site surrounded by houses, it is desirable to have an alternative to connecting the inside and outside by transparency.

Figure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - Interior Photography
© Naomichi Sode

Therefore, in this project, we tried to design a space that makes people feel as if they are outside even though they are inside by manipulating the building form. In this study, we formed the interior space by arranging five rectangles on the site, and at the same time, we tried to obtain a plane as gardens and a patio. There is no hierarchy, and both are treated equally. The scale and form of both the architecture as "figure" and the site as "ground" are considered to be similar.

Figure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - Interior Photography, Windows, Facade
© Naomichi Sode
Figure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - Image 16 of 19
Sections

As a result, when people walk through the interior space the "figure and the ground" are reversed creating the illusion that the interior and the exterior are interchangeable. Occupants are given the impression that they are walking along a path between the buildings, like a passage. Through the manipulation of form and the interdigitation of volumes, the boundaries between interior and exterior, architecture and context, become blurred.

Figure - Ground  / Studio Takuya Hosokai - Exterior Photography, Door, Facade
© Naomichi Sode

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Project location

Address:Niigata, Japan

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Location to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.
About this office
Cite: "Figure - Ground / Studio Takuya Hosokai" 26 Mar 2021. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/959202/figure-ground-studio-takuya-hosokai> ISSN 0719-8884

© Naomichi Sode

Figure-Ground 理发店 / Studio Takuya Hosokai

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