TAKAO SHIOTSUKA ATELIER

Taketa city library

photo Toshiyuki Yano

Taketa city library

Taketa city, Oita, Japan

2017.03

Library

1550m2

Open the castle town

Taketa City in Oita Prefecture has a population of about 20,000, on the center of Kyushu and bordering on Kumamoto Prefecture. The center of the city is a castle town surrounded by mountains on all sides, and it still retains the unique atmosphere by the town divisions and the width of streets. However, there are few people walking around in the city, and the city is trying to overcome this situation by promoting* “Castle Town Revitalization project”, and the spearhead of the project was the rebuilding of the library. The plan uses a gabled roof and white walls by considering affinity to the landscape of the castle town, and performs a “division of the roof” and a “Separation of the roof and the wall”. I tried to incorporate the castle town’s environment of light, wind, and landscape into the architecture through the gaps that were created. The interior of the building is a connected space with a large volume, and the book stacks characterizes each space. The book stacks are gently curving around the library like water and wind currents. The arrangement was inspired by the idea of incorporating the flow of wind in the architecture, which flows in a certain direction throughout the year. The book stacks encourage visitors to move around, and the various heights of the stacks create a space that is appropriate to the location. I tried to create characteristic space, for example, the south open stacks like a bright plain, the north open stacks like a quiet forest, and the second floor open stacks like an intimate cave. There is no further expansion of the castle town, and landscape elements such as town divisions, street widths, roofs and walls are not going to change. This common sound of unchanging is the essence of this town. On top of that, make the site opened across the town divisions and make the roof and walls opened to draw in the environment of the castle town, and provide the necessary equipment to encourage people’s movement. It is the opening of the castle town from the “unchanging order” that it possesses. I have a feeling that the new town is going to start.