the RECORDS / シロアナ＋上領大祐建築設計事務所＋ホシガラス＋千都建築設計事務所＋cotto＋SPACEMAN＋拓匠開発

Despite being within walking distance of JR Chiba Station and adjacent to a large urban park, a 35-year-old business hotel whose value had been buried in the ground was transformed into a commercial complex with stores on the 1st, 2nd, and 5th floors and offices on the 3rd and 4th floors, with the aim of “integrating with the park and revitalizing the community. A local developer, who is also the building owner and office tenant, reconstructed this project into a facility with a new purpose.

The building on the proposed site was originally a business hotel, with many RC partition walls, and there are many obstacles to its rehabilitation, so according to economic principles, the theory would be to demolish it and construct a new building.
However, the client decided that the hotel’s value had been buried next to the Chiba Park, and that it would be a great help to the local community to reconstruct the hotel while utilising its structural framework, to regenerate it into a facility with a new purpose, and to show the results to the local community.
This could be said to be redevelopment of the value and potential that the city already has. (In fact, there are almost no good examples of building reuse in the Chiba Station area.)
Based on the idea that the new value of the city is created by the people who live in it, the first and second floors are intended for users of all ages and genders, and are designed to allow people to come and go as they please.
On the top floor, a ‘modern traditional Japanese restaurant’ is created as a place to revitalise local business, which has been hollowed out due to the lack of any business exchange opportunities in the Chiba area.
the RECORDS was named ‘the records’ in the hope that it would become a new record of the city’s value, ‘a place where the best memories of the city are renewed day by day, while the memory of the city is engraved’.

Despite being adjacent to a park, the ground floor of the existing building was a car park and the terrace facing the park was simply a place to store equipment.
Also, the windows on the park side of the guest rooms were small, so it could not be said that the building was open to the park or the town, both visually and in terms of flow lines.
Therefore, conversion to a building closely connected to the park is planned by converting the parking space and terrace into seating space and adding large windows on the park side.
We thought that the seepage of people from the first floor, the linking of the flow line with the park, and the psychological and visual connection between the terrace and the park would also activate the local area.
The use of the parking space as a restaurant, which is subject to a reduced floor-area ratio, required a reduction in floor space in other parts of the building, but we took advantage of this to create a sense of openness in the existing building with its low roof height and a large atrium on each floor to create a connection between the different floors.
The seating space on the first and second floors can be used as a stage for various events.
The 3rd floor is located on the east side and the 4th floor on the opposite side, making each floor a seamless space through the atrium and creating a large open office space.

The architecture, interior design and furniture for each restaurant, signage, landscape design including the top and 2nd floor terraces, and the colour coordination were designed by the same team, with a unified tone and manner for all, despite the diversity on each floor.
The logo design was based on the image of ‘accumulating memories and rewriting records’, with three layers of letters and strips.
In particular, the vertical wall of the stairwell is boldly decorated with a giant 8 m high neon logo sign.
This symbolic sign provides a very atmospheric backdrop for the rooftop bar both day and night.
The signage and pictograms are also produced with a unified tone and manner of thinking, such as the concept of overlapping letters.
In addition, each floor has a map sign that looks like a translucent acrylic overlay on the existing floor map, and in front of the building, the logo and floor map are placed on the boiler tank that was originally on the roof as a symbol and a 300-year-old olive tree has been planted.
The image of the building is one of building on and renewing the history of the building. (Toshitaka Terashima, Daisuke Kamiryo, Yoshikazu Takahashi, Yuko Yatsuyanagi, SPACEMAN, Hideyuki Kudo)

Location: Chiba-shi, Chiba, Japan
Principal use: Complex facilities
Client: Takusho Kaihatsu
Completion: 2022

Architects: Siloana, Daisuke Kamiryo Architects, Hoshigarasu, Sent Architects, cotto, SPACEMAN, Takusho Kaihatsu
Design team: Toshitaka Terashima / Siloana, Daisuke Kamiryo / Daisuke Kamiryo Architects, Yoshikazu Takahashi / Hoshigarasu, Susumu Koshiura / Sent Architects, Yuko Yatsuyanagi / cotto
Contractor: SYOEI KENSETSU, Drawer
Furniture: akitomo furniture works, IDÉE

Photographs: Ooki Jingu

Construction type: Renovation
Main structure: Reinforced Concrete construction
Building scale: 5 stories
Site area: 702.90m²
Building area: 484.44m²
Total floor area: 1,408.60m²
Design term: 2020.09-2022.09
Construction term: 2021.11-2022.09