Status: Proposal in 05.2021
Program: Police office
Location: Fukuyama-Higashi, Hiroshima, Japan
Site area: 184 m2
GFA: 90m2
This pavilion is a proposal from a competition for the police box in Fukuyama, a city in the Chugoku region of Japan with a thriving steel industry.
The site is located to the west of Fukuyama Station, which is used by 40,000 people every day, in front of the linear elevated tracks of the Shinkansen. In addition to the usual police box program of watching over and supporting the lives of citizens, the design had to be friendly and symbolic, supporting the development of the city. The functions of the building include offices for police officers and counters for users on the first floor and sleeping rooms on the second floor.
In proposing, we focused on the roof, as the roadside folly called “Tsujido”, which originated in Fukuyama and has been popular for nearly 400 years, has provided space under the roof for resting and gathering among people. To make this roof (Grand eave) a symbol and also easy to recognize from a distance, we designed this roof to rise toward the station. This shape also expresses the sense of speed of the site, which can be felt when driving along this road and passing by and seeing the dynamic change of the curved grand eave every moment. At night, the grand eave is illuminated by interactive lighting art and comes to life. It will become a landmark of modern “Tsujido” in the city where people can gaze, gather, and stay close to each other.
The curved eave of the building corresponds to the "curved" shape of the roof of Fukuyama Castle on the north side of the station, while the southern area of the station, where the site is located, has many new buildings with square and vertical lines. The site used to be a part of the castle town, and the curved lines of the large eaves connect the landscape and history divided by the Shinkansen tracks. The structure of the eaves is a sandwich panel made of steel plates manufactured locally, where the steel industry is flourishing.
We named the building "DRIVE CANOPY" in the hope that it will transcend the framework of the police box program, become a new symbol that connects the history and landscape of the city, and drive the redevelopment of the city.
Architectural Design: Takashi Niwa Architects
Design team: Takashi Niwa, Kyohei Takahashi, Tran Thi Thu Trang, Pham Duy Lam
Structure design: Sugimoto Masaki Structural Design Office