Location: Yokohama, Japan

Design Team: HAGISO

Area: 145.73 m² (77.45 m² cafe and 68.28 m² shared terrace)

Year: 2024

Photography: Keishin Horikoshi / SS

Design Features: BERTH COFFEE Minatomirai occupies the second floor of Leaf Minatomirai in Yokohama. It is the coffee brand's third permanent location and its first standalone cafe. HAGISO was asked to design both the 77.45 m² tenancy and an adjoining 68.28 m² shared terrace, turning a conventional boundary between private and common space into the project's central question: could the everyday life of one cafe lend a public presence to the wider building?

The name BERTH refers to a place where a vessel comes alongside. Rather than illustrating a harbour, HAGISO translated that meaning into a relationship between the body and the pace of the city. A continuous seating landscape, raised 370 mm above the floor, moves from the cafe into the common area like a low island. Entry, ordering, waiting, solitary pauses and group conversations gather along its irregular edge, so choosing where to sit becomes part of the spatial experience.

The island is built from layered softwood plywood and a hand-applied finish containing spent coffee grounds from BERTH COFFEE. The grounds give the pale surface a restrained brown grain and return a residue of daily operation to the architecture. Its exposed strata suggest both shoreline sediment and the touch of making. Set against the polished neutrality of the commercial complex, these surfaces are intended to register use, wear and accumulated time.

Two ceiling volumes above the kitchen mirror the floating condition of the seating below. While meeting hygiene requirements and providing the illuminance and colour temperature needed for work, their edges shift subtly with the principal routes through the cafe. Movement between entrance, counter, kitchen and terrace is guided by changes in height, angle, light and furniture rather than by enclosing walls. The tenancy and shared zone remain operationally distinct, yet are experienced as a continuous field.

How the cafe has been inhabited since completion gives this strategy its fullest meaning. Morning regulars, afternoon shoppers, families, older neighbours and visitors arriving for events in Minatomirai continually redistribute themselves across the seating. The shared terrace supports a looser occupation, while the cafe interior offers a more settled rhythm. The project is memorable not because it resembles a vessel, but because one low, inhabitable island allows the tide of the city to pause inside a high-rise commercial building.

Design Team: HAGISO is led by architect Mitsuyoshi Miyazaki. The practice grew from the team's transformation and operation of Hagiso, a post-war timber apartment building in Tokyo's Yanaka district, in 2013; the company was formally established in 2016. Miyazaki studied architecture at Tokyo University of the Arts and completed his master's degree there before working at Arata Isozaki & Associates. HAGISO is based in Yanaka, with its design office in Sendagi and a branch in Maebashi, and works across architecture, interiors, urban renewal, hospitality, food, planning and operation.

The studio treats design as a process of re-editing existing resources and everyday relationships. Architects work alongside planners, graphic designers, food directors, hotel staff and baristas, allowing spatial ideas to be tested and refined through operation after opening. Its work repeatedly examines how shops meet streets, how accommodation enters neighbourhood life, and how overlooked buildings can support local culture. Completion is therefore not an endpoint, but the beginning of a place's gradual life within the city.

BERTH COFFEE Minatomirai was designed by Mitsuyoshi Miyazaki and Yuya Maeshiba, with construction by Kplus and building-services design by Enex Rain. The continuous seating landscape extends the tenancy into adjoining common space, continuing HAGISO's interest in everyday public life. The studio received the 2018 Good Design Gold Award for hanare, Good Design Awards for LANDABOUT and Nishinippori Scramble, and a 2025 BELCA Best Renovation Award for Shinonome Shinkin Bank's Maebashi branch.