Happy glaze
Design inspires dessert at Keiji Ashizawa’s Blue Bottle Coffee store in Tokyo’s Jinnan
When the opportunity presented itself to take over the better part of a park in the quiet, trendy Jinnan area of Tokyo’s Shibuya district, Blue Bottle Coffee was quick to make the move. ‘We’ve wanted to open in Shibuya for a long time, but were waiting for the right location,’ says chief brand officer Saki Igawa. The Californian brand has a strong foothold in Japan, and seeks out less-obvious locations. The first local store, opened in 2015, did a lot to put the Kiyosumi area in east Tokyo on the coffee map; the chain has also successfully transformed traditional townhouses in Kyoto into trendy hotspots for the caffeine-hungry.
Schemata Architects, led by Jo Nagasaka, has been the practice of choice for the brand, designing almost 20 stores in Japan alone, as well as a few in South Korea, and one in Los Angeles. The Jinnan store, however, is designed by Tokyo-based Keiji Ashizawa. It’s the architect’s second Blue Bottle location, following the Minatomirai store in Yokohama that opened in September 2020.
Ashizawa used wood as his key material in Yokohama, but, in Jinnan, Formafantasma’s ‘Excinere’ tile, glazed with the ash of a Sicilian volcano for architectural materials company Dzek (W*242), takes centre stage. It clads the large counter on the ground floor, and a full-length wall and a custom-built table upstairs. ‘I’ve known Brent Dzekciorius from Dzek for a long time and he’d sent me a sample of the tile,’ says Ashizawa. ‘When Blue Bottle approached me about the Jinnan store, I thought this would work well. A rectangular cheesecake with a crème brûlée top matching the colours of the Formafantasma tile has even been added to the menu.’
Ashizawa enlisted Norm Architects to design furniture for the Yokohama store, but he took on the challenge himself at Jinnan. Outside, a special stacking bench made by Ishinomaki Laboratory (W*217), which he helped found after the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, provides casual seating that can easily be moved around and kept within the store at night. Inside, furniture made by Japanese brands Karimoku and Ariake provides a range of seating. Asked if the latest two stores by Ashizawa signal the end of Blue Bottle’s long-standing collaboration with Schemata Architects, Igawa insists, ‘We are still working with Schemata, but we like to keep the design fresh so it doesn’t become a cookie-cutter environment.’ Judging by the excitement of both Igawa and Ashizawa, bland corporate roll-out is the last thing on their minds.*
Jinnan 1-7-3, Shibuya, Tokyo, bluebottlecoffee.com; keijidesign.com