Project Name: NANZUKA TAKEN

Location: Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan

Design Team: SNARK Inc.

Principal Use: Restaurant / Art Bar

Area: 69.63㎡

Design Period: October 2022 - February 2024

Construction Period: March 2024 - June 2024

Completion: July 2024

Construction: butter

Photography: Ippei Shinzawa

Design Features: SNARK Inc. has completed NANZUKA TAKEN, a dining and bar space in Shibuya, Tokyo. Operated by the contemporary art gallery NANZUKA, the art bar was planned in collaboration with multiple artists, bringing together two sharply contrasting atmospheres: a main bar that evokes outer space, and a timber-lined VIP bar concealed beyond it.

The project is not simply the making of a bar, but the construction of a more immersive relationship between art, commerce, and nighttime social life. The main bar, open to all visitors, is shaped as a futuristic and space-like environment. Metal panels cover the floor, walls, and ceiling, scattering the light of fixtures and video works across the room and giving the hard surfaces a shifting visual depth.

Within this setting, artworks are not added as decoration after the fact; they become the primary agents of atmosphere. The counter, chairs, and tables made by Tetsuya Nakamura, together with a large-scale work by Hajime Sorayama, are embedded into the interior, turning the main bar into a field between exhibition, performance, and everyday occupation. The metallic surfaces continue to catch changing light, intensifying the reflections between artwork, body, and space.

Behind a hidden door from the main area, the VIP bar shifts into an entirely different timber atmosphere. The counter surface and speakers, carved by Ryuichi Ohira from a single log, carry the weight and tactility of handwork. The ceiling panels are toned in pale grey so that the grain does not become overly dominant, while the plaster walls are detailed with large rounded external corners, allowing the material to remain tactile while receding as a background for the works.

The project also incorporates a series of experimental details. A peephole fitted with a fisheye lens allows the shop to be glimpsed from outside through a distorted field of view, while an internally lit sign also functions as the door handle. Through these gestures, NANZUKA TAKEN becomes a bar that can be seen, entered, and discovered as an active site for art.

Design Team: SNARK Inc. is an architecture practice based in Gunma and Tokyo. Its work spans product and furniture design, shops, private houses, collective housing, public facilities, planning, design, construction supervision, and event planning and operation. The practice began in June 2008 as Sunao Koase Architectural Design Office SNARK and was incorporated as SNARK Inc. in December 2016.

The studio is led by Representative Director Sunao Koase, with directors Yu Yamada and Rei Oshima. SNARK Inc. works through a team-based process with clients, builders, and collaborators, considering not only architecture itself but also the objects and events around it. Across residential, commercial, cultural, and public projects, the office seeks architectural forms that closely match the lives, values, and ways of working, living, and playing of the people who use them.