Soba Restaurant at Togakushi Shrine
Nagano, Japan
Kengo Kuma & Associates

Kengo Kuma explores the expressive possibilities of a simple structure and a restrained palette of materials

© Daici Ano

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By Clifford A. Pearson

The Togakushi Shrine in Japan’s snowy highlands near Nagano draws both Buddhist pilgrims and tourists with its temples and dramatic natural setting. A 1-hour walk along a cedar-lined road leads visitors to Oku-Sha, one of three sanctuaries at the shrine. At the start of this road, Tokyo-based architect Kengo Kuma has created a humble but poetic restaurant serving a local specialty: the plain buckwheat noodles called soba.

Asked to replace an existing restaurant that was falling apart, Kuma designed a one-story structure that is as straightforward and satisfying as the establishment’s featured dish. The 2,560-square-foot building houses a one-room dining area, a kitchen with a long opening to the dining room, a small soba-fabrication room, and an enclosed terrace running the length of the structure.

Kuma has made a name for himself with projects that explore the nature of the materials they use, such as the Bamboo House outside of Beijing, the Stone Museum in Tochigi Prefecture, and the Hiroshige Ando Museum (also in Tochigi), which mesmerizes visitors with rhythmic rows of Japanese-cedar louvers. In the Soba Restaurant, he again employs a simple material—stained cedar—in a repetitive manner that heightens its impact. Used in conjunction with a steel frame and glass curtain wall, the red-cedar louvers form an abstracted forest surrounding diners inside the restaurant and connecting them to the real forest outside.

Using a gable roof with eaves that come low to the ground, the architect tried to make the building disappear in its wooded setting. Due to the large amount of snow that falls in this part of Japan every winter, the joists are 10-inch-deep timbers that make a strong impression overhead in the dining room. From inside the restaurant, diners look through the enclosed terrace and a wall of cedar louvers whose top and bottom edges are obscured by the horizontal planes of the upper wall and floor. Kuma says he hid the edges of the louvers to blur the separation of the architecture from its surroundings.

The tables and chairs in the restaurant, all made of stained white ash so they blend seamlessly with the floor and louvers, extend an austere aesthetic of material and visual continuity throughout the interior. Hanging lamp shades wrapped around a row of plain light bulbs provide glowing accents to the space and add a necessary touch of visual warmth.

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Formal name of Project:
Soba Restaurant at Togakushi Shrine

Location:
Nagano, Japan

Owner:
Okusha Kaikan

Architect:
Kengo Kuma & Associates
2-24-8 Minami Aoyama
Minato-ku. Tokyo 107.0062. Japan