Host to a small cafe and an open-air social area, Omoken Park has been designed by locally based Yabashi Architects to be a "public space of private space" where locals can gather and interact.
Yabashi Architects has built a simple, elongated and stepped cafe in a narrow site in Kyushu, Japan, as a new public intervention and social space. The 67,66-square-metre project was transformed from the ruins of buildings damaged by the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake.
Dubbed as OMOKEN Park, the cafe, comprised of an elongated wooden volumes, has only two façades - one in street front and the other is the backyard. But this simple and modern box is entirely multi-purposed in which its roof are be able to be used as sitting and social area. Its stepped roof system also provides space in different levels while visitors observing what is happening inside the cafe.
"Citizens who have experienced earthquakes have become aware of symbiosis more than ever by helping each other," explained the practice, which is lead by Tohru Yabashi.
Inside is a small cafe that's almost entirely lined with cross-laminated timber (CLT), a warm contrast to the building's steel framework. Wood has also been used to create the long service counter, stool seats and central dining table, which is illuminated by exposed-bulb pendant lamps suspended overhead.
