Café Kureon

Typically Kengo Kuma, a wooden pavilion recently erected on an industrial site in Toyama is seemingly put together with a child's set of Kapla blocks.


You've experimented with stacked beams before. What's different about the technique you used for this project?

Kengo Kuma: The client, a company in Toyama, wanted to revitalize the area in which the café is located. I'm quite familiar with the city, as we are currently working on a museum there. That's one of the reasons we were asked to design the café. Our proposal featured the use of local wood for the construction of a simple pavilion. We chose a building method based on masonry, though, which made the idea rather unconventional. We used pine beams with a square cross section, 105 x 105 mm, the most affordable type of wood and easily available. After drilling holes in the timbers, we connected the beams with 30 mm steel bolts. Because of the way it's put together, the building is easy to dismantle and reassemble for other purposes, if necessary. Visitors to the café feel as though they're wrapped in the walls of a wooden cave.

We wanted to create a building like a forest by piling up pieces of wood, rather than joining them together. The element we chose was an ordinary and affordable rectangular timber sectioned in 105mm. Without giving any special treatment to the wood, we sought to realize an organic space like a forest, simply by accumulating the timbers. The idea of making an organic and fluid space with small and light materials has been developed through our past projects, such as GC Prostho Museum Research center or Yusuhara Wooden Bridge Museum. Since the timber is free of special treatment, it can easily go back to its initial state when the building needs to be disassembled and moved. This method takes full advantage of the flexibility of the wooden structure, which is not possible in concrete. As detail, steel rod in 30mmφvertically goes through the accumulated timbers. On top of the timbers, folded (bent) plates are placed as the roof, a simple and inexpensive method that is also convenient for disassembling and moving.