Restaurant in Ogawa / UENOA

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Creating a new face for the shopping district– This project involves the renovation of an 80-year-old house with a store in a corner of a shopping street in Ogawa-machi, Saitama Prefecture. The client's grandmother used to run a beauty salon here, and the client, who used to run an Italian restaurant in Tokyo, wanted to move there and open a restaurant.At the same time as the project began, it was decided to phase out the arcade over the sidewalk in the shopping arcade. The arcade was built at the same height as one level of the building, and the two-story buildings lining the shopping street were divided into two halves by the arcade, but the removal of the arcade revealed the height of each building for the first time. We wondered if we could use this as a trigger for our planning and decided to create an entrance as an external space with the height of two stories, which had been difficult to experience before.The entrance space, which was created by inserting two layers of blank space from the outside, creates an impressive face of the building and at the same time functions as a rain shelter instead of an arcade, and also serves as a structural reinforcement for the existing building. The interior space is gently divided by the inserted entrance space, creating a cozy atmosphere that is visible and hidden from the restaurant's seating area.