A project for a pharmacy with cafe in Tosu City, Saga Prefecture. The surrounding area still retains its old block divisions, and many of the streets are small in width. The client couple is a pharmacist and pastry chef who run a pastry store nearby. The client wanted the pharmacy to be an easy place to stop by and to take root in the community as a social facility with a café.

The site is long and narrow, 5.5m wide and 32m deep, so we proposed to create a passageway within the building, like the surrounding pathways, to obtain good light and wind in a high-density environment, and to allow sight lines. By creating a passageway on the south side of the building in conjunction with the neighbor’s pathway, ventilation is prompted to the surrounding area. The necessary rooms were placed on the north side, and a “wall roof” covered them from the south. This “Kabe-yane (wall-roof)” extends the specifications for fire walls to the roof. As a result, the high windows and doorway fittings of the passageway are exempted from the regulations as fire protection equipment, allowing the use of high-design transparent glass while lowering costs.

The reception area of the café and pharmacy facing the passageway has a 1.8m wide passageway, and the sunlight from the north side creates a stable light environment to create a highly open space. On the pharmacy room and staff room side, the passageway are 0.9 m wide, and high windows allow for the necessary lighting, ventilation, and smoke removal for each room. The structure is a conventional wooden construction method, and by using steel frame materials in some parts, two different cross-sectional shapes were realized in a rational way at the front and the back of building. The back side of the building is stabilized by directly joining the “Kabe-yane” (wall-roof) and the wooden framing of each room, while the front side, a V-shaped steel frame provides distance between them. This V-shaped steel frame also serves as a mullion for the high windows and a receptacle for indirect lighting.

After completion, the client saw the passage space, which was more breezy and filled with beautiful sunlight than they had imagined, and came up to an idea of hanging pictures. This flow line with slight width allows one to imagine a variety of uses for the building, such as seating for a café or exhibitions, as it changes in the future. We hope that this light-filled space with its “Kabe-yane” (wall roof) will become a new place for the neighborhood to stop by.