As the catalyst of the industry, Starbucks has introduced a new style of café culture to urban communities. The Starbucks Reserve® Roastery in Nakameguro is their new model of business, which follows the stores in Seattle, Shanghai, Milan and New York.
The Roastery Tokyo is structured as a spiral centering around the “cask,” the giant silo for coffee beans stretching as high as 17m from the bottom. With this new building, we aimed to enliven the whole activity in its neighborhood.
In line with the streets forming a triangle, a couple of new functions, such as a bakery, bar, tea corner in addition to the café area were brought in to diversify the activities on the streets.
We also designed an engawa-typed terrace on the upper floor to secure continuity from the town. Customers at the Roastery can enjoy the view of the Meguro River and the cherry trees here as well as their coffees.
The eaves for the terrace are layered and finished as Yamato-bari clad with cedar wood (staggered arrangement of the panels), to remind us of Japan’s traditional five-story pagoda and propose a modern version of greenery, or bonsai, instead of following a typical urban building with vertical walls.
At the northern side of the building, we placed planters as a buffer between the roaster and the adjacent apartment house. The boxes of aluminum are supported by the 16.3mm-diameter wire rope and feed-water pipe is combined with drainpipe, as we wanted the planters to play the central role on the façade. In its attempt to use the gutter this way, the roaster should belong to the same family of Katsura Villa in Kyoto and many other traditional Japanese architecture.
