Kurashi No Kaori Atelier in Lake Yamanaka / ALA Inc.
Kurashi No Kaori Atelier in Lake Yamanaka / ALA Inc.
Text description provided by the architects. A factory for a fragrance company in a forest near Lake Yamanaka. The site has a fine view of Mt. Fuji and our client required a café, shop, and guest rooms not only a factory function with a garden for enjoying the mountain view. The company creates daily fragrance products with the concept of nature, friendly integrated into human life and they hoped to create the building as “a friendly symbol” which attracts local people’s gathering.
We translated the required functions into five different sizes of boxes to avoid the typical feeling of a big factory volume and shifted them in both plan and section like a matryoshka doll. The shifted composition allows having the mountain views from all rooms so that we could put picture windows in gaps between the boxes.
The windows are in random proportions according to room function and show a different way of framing the mountain views. The five boxes have deep eaves facing Mt. Fuji. So, visitors encounter the series of the upward roof with sensitive wood rafters as a “Sense of welcome “at first. A garden for the playground, for growing herbs, is connected to the buildings by a zigzag terrace.
For the interior, visitors experience that the space scale becomes bigger in accordance with the depth of the building. Our basic interior design theme is simpleness and tranquility as a reflection of the company’s concept in order to enjoy the change of natural light and the mountain’s appearance moment by moment. Structural plywood walls supporting the roofs are exposed and painted in blue-green which is the company’s color making soft contrast with the orange-colored eave back. The space color of the 2nd floor is toned down and darker for a relaxed guest room atmosphere with a cozy furniture setting.
