Project Name: Blue Bottle Coffee Kamakura Café

Location: Kamakura, Japan

Design Team: ninkipen!

Floor Area: 133.25 m²

Completion: May 2026

Image Copyright: Hiroki Kawata

Design Features: Osaka-based architect Yasuo Imazu of ninkipen! has completed a Blue Bottle Coffee café in Kamakura, Japan, suspending a ceiling of stainless steel panels above the room in a contemporary echo of traditional Japanese coffered ceilings.

The 133-square-metre café sits on a narrow lane linking the bustling Komachi-dori shopping street with the tree-lined Wakamiya Oji avenue, roughly midway between Kamakura Station and Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine. The architect set out to create a coffee space befitting a city dense with historic temples and shrines and framed by both sea and mountains.

The ceiling design takes its cue from a nearby work by Junzo Sakakura: the pilotis ceiling of the Kamakura Museum of Literature (formerly the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Art), completed in 1951, where light reflected off an adjacent lotus pond once shimmered across the underside of the building. Imazu arranged stainless steel panels in an even grid reminiscent of the gotenjo coffered ceilings found in traditional Japanese architecture, including nearby Kenchoji Temple. The metal subtly catches the café's lighting and the movement of customers below, quietly shifting in appearance and lending the room a gentle, pleasant flicker.

At the rear of the café, a bench seat is backed by a wall of handmade washi paper, slowly dyed using spent coffee. A custom pendant light suspended at the centre of the room references the Bonbori Festival held at Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, its washi shade pulped together with discarded coffee grounds; both the wall and the light were developed as original, coffee-derived materials specific to the project. In cross-section, the pendant's form spells out the numeral eight, a reference to the hachi in Hachimangu. The fabric covering the bench seating takes on the blue-violet hue of hydrangeas, the flower most associated with Kamakura in early summer.

Design Team: Ninkipen! is the Osaka-based architecture and interior design studio of Yasuo Imazu, established in 2005 in Minoh, on the outskirts of Osaka. Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture in 1976 and raised in Osaka, Imazu formed an early design collective named “pen!” with friends while completing his master's degree in architectural engineering at Osaka University, before joining Takeo Endo's architectural office, where he worked on public buildings and housing projects between 2001 and 2005.

Since founding ninkipen!, Imazu has built a practice spanning houses, cafés, bakeries and apparel stores throughout Japan, approaching each commission as an exercise in reading the relationships between client, budget, era and site context. Notable projects include the weekend house Suiso in Karuizawa, the courtyard house Kagi-no-Hanare in Habikino, and the apparel store camisimo in Kyoto.

The studio's work has been recognised internationally, including coverage by the UK design publication Dezeen, and has received awards such as the Sato Taku Prize at the Tokyo Midtown Award and the Iyo Satoshi Prize at Japan's Architecture Works with a Roof competition. Imazu has also taught architecture as a part-time lecturer at Setsunan University, Osaka University, Kindai University and Kobe Design University.