Nitto Pharma Cento anni Hall

The project was to renovate an old factory into a building equipped with a hall and several conference rooms. The north side connects another factory building and the east side looks out onto the employee tennis courts. The administrative building stands a short distance to the south and a neighbor’s house sits right next to it to the west. The primary idea was to turn the factory, located in such a confined space, into a building that opens up outward. But simply installing an opening to the exterior wall would not have realized this intention. Instead, we added eaves to the east and south sides of the building and created a semi-outdoor space which plays with the basic structure in order to define its relation to the external environment. Standard sized interchangeable light controlling devices such as vertical louvres and sun shading cloth are attached under the eaves. In addition to the eave, a wood-deck was built at the south side of the hall space, which looks out onto the garden. The opening uses three different kinds of screens: wood, glass, and paper, and this makes possible a variety of light and landscape, from completely open to utterly shielded, to lay out before the hall. Viewing the familiar scenery from inside the new space, if people feel it is “discreetly distant” or feel that their everyday “workplace” looks slightly different, then our mission will have been accomplished.