We run a free-standing outlet recognized as one of the doll shops with largest floor space in Japan. As the shop stands in the area where many other businesses in the same industry also cluster, we have stricken out our originality as a fun and impressive shop with quality. The vast variety of roducts also enables us to meet the customers’ demands and budgets.

The 500m2, three-story building stands on the roadside site of approximately 1650m2. The alignment of building within the site and façade are designed to make the shop outstand from other signs or shops and impress drivers with easily recognizable and visually memorable feature. The façade upholds the shop logo with the size a passing driver can immediately take in the name and type of business. The building is further characterized with a lattice pattern to give it a Japanese flavor.

The lighting effect used for the topmost of the building and a part of surrounding walls are planned to fit in the evening business hour. Most of the fixtures inside the store are movable, making it possible to change the layout in the store flexibly with MD construction and with changes in the season and volume of articles on display.

In the front of the entrance we constructed a promotion stage backdrop with rock surface of Aji stone, a kind of granite mined in Shikoku, Japan, to create an unforgettable impact with its presence and texture. Part of the partitions which divide up spaces are designed as latticework similar to a façade which takes into consideration the feel of the material and a sense of being closed off, and it forms a partition which has a spacious feel.

The wall surface from the customers’ space to around the counter has a striped collage arrangement of Japanese paper evoking an image in ancient color tones of the layered ceremonial robes Japanese Court ladies; adding another dimension to the representation of the Japanese doll store. The sides of the store are furnished with plain wooden chairs and tables for serving customers or for resting and overhead are pendant lights created by none other than Isamu Noguchi from Aji, Shikoku. This is an innovative type of doll store which fuses both modern and traditional details.

Design by Ichiro Nishiwaki
Photo by Nacása & Partners Inc.