Project Details
- Project Name
- Tenri Station Plaza CoFuFun
- Architect
- Nendo
- Project Types
- Infrastructure
- Project Scope
- New Construction
- Size
- 64,584 sq. feet
- Year Completed
- 2017
- Shared by
- Hanley Wood
- Project Status
- Built
A revamped public transit plaza brings playfulness and civic engagement to a town in Japan’s Nara prefecture.
In 2014, the rail station in Tenri, Japan, was, urbanistically speaking, dead. Peak times were busy as commuters from the town of nearly 70,000 made their way to or from work in nearby Osaka, but the rest of the day, “the space in front of the station had become a place that people just passed by,” says Oki Sato, chief designer and founder of Nendo.
The mayor decided it was time for a change, and held a design competition to enliven the site. Nendo won, and with the victory took on one of its largest architectural commissions to date. The Tokyo- and Milan-based firm is known for its extensive portfolio of retail interiors, branding, and industrial design, and it brings every bit of that varied expertise to bear in the recently opened refresh of the space. And as for the size and scale of the 64,583-square-foot project, Sato says that his team wasn’t daunted, and in fact “tried to design huge furniture, instead of an architecture piece.”
Tenri Station Plaza CoFuFun, as Nendo dubbed its scheme, is a supergraphic set of stepped conical pavilions, some upright, some inverted, like retro spinning tops on display. One holds a café, one is an observation deck and stage, and another a play area. Every surface—roof included—is meant to be engaged.
The pavilions’ forms were inspired by kofun, ancient keyhole-shaped imperial tombs made from mounded earth that can be found throughout the area. The circular twist was pure function: “We wanted to make the space accessible from anywhere,” Sato says.
Each structure is made from 36 pieces of precast concrete, which were craned into place on site. Sato chose precast not only for its precision forming and ability to create columnless interiors, but also for its thrift: The formwork was reused multiple times, with the components deployed in different configurations.
Ask Sato the intention behind the ubiquitous steps, and he replies that the singular form serves multiple purposes, from retail displays, to seating, to fences that contain children at play. “This variety creates an environment that encourages visitors to explore and spend time in different spaces within the plaza,” he says. “It’s an ambiguous space that’s a café, a playground, and a piece of furniture, all at once.”
And that empty plaza that spurred the competition in the first place? It’s now full. After the opening, Sato says, “I heard that when citizens see so many gather at the plaza for weekend events, they are surprised to find out that so many other people live in Tenri.”
Project Credits
Project: Tenri Station Plaza CoFuFun, Tenri, Japan
Client: Tenri City Design: Nendo
Construction Administration: Iwataya Architects
Meeting Area Interior Design: Kokuyo
Signage, Website, and Digital Signage Design: Nippon Design Center Irobe Design Institute
Lighting Design: Izumi Okayasu Lighting Design
Landscape Design: Studio Mons
Size: 6,000 square meters (64,584 square feet)
Cost: Withheld
Project Description
FROM THE ARCHITECTS:
The master plan for the station plaza at Tenri Station in Nara prefecture, located in the southwest region of Japan.
The plan for the 6,000 square meter area includes bicycle rentals, a cafe and other shops, an information kiosk, a play area, outdoor stage, and meeting area. The project goal was to encourage local community revitalization by providing a space for events, tourist information dissemination and leisure facilities for local residents.
Tenri’s urban boundaries include a number of ancient Japanese tombs, known as “cofun”. The cofun are beautiful and unmistakable, but blend into the spaces of everyday life in the city. The plaza’s landscape, richly punctuated by several of these cofun, is a representation of the area’s characteristic geography: the Nara Basin, surrounded on all sides by mountains.
The construction technique used to create the plaza’s round cofun structures consisted of fitting together pieces of a precast concrete mould resembling a huge pizza. Because precast concrete moulds are formed at the factory and then assembled onsite, the resulting structures are precise and the same mould can be used multiple times, ensuring excellent cost-performance. The pre-formed parts are pieced together like building blocks using the same massive cranes used to build bridges. Large spaces can be formed without the use of columns or beams, and because of the round shape the well-balanced structures offer stability against forces applied from any direction.
The cofun’s different levels serve a variety of purposes: they’re stairs, but also benches for sitting, fences to enclose playing children, the cafe and stage roofs, shelves for displaying products and the nighttime lighting effect, which floods the plaza with light.
Guideposts and signboards feature gentle curves similar to those of the cofun, and are colored a dark grey that creates a natural contrast while still fitting in with the surrounding area well. They are also arranged at four different heights according to their function in order to minimize noise levels. A play space for children, a lounge and study space for reading books, and a stage that can be used for concerts or public screenings have all been added to the meeting area, and Tenri souvenirs can be purchased at a newly designed shop next to the space.
Every design was given to ensure that the materials and coloring of the interiors matched those of the plaza as closely as possible. Furniture and fixtures made using wood from Nara Prefecture and designed around a cofun theme create a sense of uniformity with the plaza.
The plaza’s name, CoFuFun, combines the main design motif, the cofun, with colloquial Japanese expressions. “Fufun” refers to happy, unconscious humming: the design for the plaza should offer a convivial atmosphere that unconsciously leads visitors to hum, happily, while they’re there.
The alphabet spelling, “CoFuFun”, also brings in the “co-” of “cooperation” and “community”, as well as – of course – “fun” itself. The result is a name whose Japanese and alphabet spellings mean similar things, so that foreign visitors to the plaza will understand it in the same way, too.