Site
Location: Kyoto
Land area: 1,059m2

Building
Use: Car Showroom and Factory
Structure: Steel
Floor Area: 1,836m2

Webpage  
e-architect

Hakko is one of the biggest dealers handling European cars around Osaka, specializing in Jaguar, Land 
Rover and so on. This showroom is their first showroom in Kyoto. We tried to make modern architecture that 
integrated with the surrounding environment. I hoped the façade would seem to melt into the street side trees. 
So we designed the façade to appear as if the main volume is floating and consists of stacked, separated 
layers in the green leaves. 

“Shakkei” is the Japanese idea of landscapes in gardens. It is a method of using elements of the surrounding 
environment as the background. The direct translation of “Shakkei” is “borrowed scenery”. We adopted this 
idea to create the showroom. Specifically the show room and the maintenance space draw the green scenery 
of the street side trees into their spaces.

The thin floating first floor which circumference of the atrium feels organic, implying movement is sloping down 
to the ground floor. But the shape of the floating mass is just a rectangle without extra meaning. It gives a 
sense of lightness. 
 
On this site there was a hotel with an underground automatic-parking facility. And the hotel resisted the earth 
pressure from the eastern cemetery. A Japanese proverb says, the location beside the cemetery is 
appropriate for merchandising. On the other hand there is a kind of deity located at the southwestern side on 
this site. We call this kind of deity “Ojizo-sama”. It is just like a fairy and is a guardian of children. 

When a young child dies in an unfortunate accident, Ojizo-sama will be established with his small house 
beside the road. So, we respect him as a guardian deity, and we have to preserve both him and his house 
throughout the demolition and the construction.