Architect：Yasuhisa Makino Architect & Associates

Location：Shin-Yokohama, Kohoku Ward, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan; | ;View Map

Project Year：2023

Category：Shops

This is the interior design of a 4 tsubo (3.5 square meter) box lunch shop located on the floor of a building directly connected to Shin-Yokohama Station.

The renovated floor directly connected to the station is lined with a wide variety of bento stores to meet the needs of Shinkansen passengers, and this store is one of those shops.

The client, which has its head office in Yamanashi Prefecture, was concerned about food loss that had been occurring in its previous business and the improvement of the working environment.

Therefore, the client decided to take an innovative approach by positioning this store as an experimental store.

All products are instantly frozen using special freezing technology and delivered directly to the client, where they are stocked in the store's freezer.

At the store, each order is heated in a microwave oven and served, eliminating the loss of unsold items.

In addition, boxed lunches, which used to be prepared manually early in the morning to coincide with store opening hours, can now be prepared by midday the day before, eliminating the need for employees to work at special hours.

Meanwhile, the store's product displays were drastically changed.

Whereas in the past, stacked lunch boxes brought a sense of liveliness and stimulated the desire to buy, in the new store, all products are stocked in the freezer. The amount of information available to the customer's eyes has been drastically reduced.

Therefore, the idea was to make the product displays bear the burden of the interior design.

In order to instantaneously convey the concept of the store in a limited space, rice (rice ears), the main ingredient of boxed lunches, was used. We incorporated it into the interior to convey the appeal of the material not only visually but also through the sense of smell.

For the display of ears of rice, multiple mockups were created to study how to assemble the ears of rice.

In the floor plan, a circulation line was added to the plot to convert the dead end of the floor into an advantage.

Although the materials used are not luxurious, we carefully considered where to use them and how to present them, aiming for a store design that is simple yet has depth.

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