Location: Fukuchiyama, Kyoto, Japan

Design Team: ninkipen!

Area: 390.71 m²

Year: 2025

Photography: Hiroki Kawata

Design Features: Torinago is the new headquarters of a specialist chicken restaurant founded in Tamba Fukuchiyama in 1976. Set between the castle town below Fukuchiyama Castle and the Yura River, the project searches for an appropriate presence in a place where historic streetscapes are gradually disappearing. Its architecture draws together the town’s memory, the river and the surrounding mountains, giving a new workplace a place within that continuity.

To respond to the scale of the historic district, the building is gathered beneath a tiled pitched roof and wrapped in charred timber with deep shadow. Rather than reproducing a traditional image, the roof and walls build a legible roofscape through layers of material and shade. The headquarters remains measured toward the street while the depth of its construction gives it a distinct presence.

On the first floor, a central kitchen sits alongside packing and shipping areas. On the second floor, roof terraces are carved out to the east and west of the office, creating a tunnel-like passage for light, air and the presence of the mountains and river. The terraces extend the workplace and become a temporary viewing stand during the annual fireworks festival, allowing everyday work and civic celebration to share one spatial framework.

Raised above the main roof as a lifted roof volume, the three-storey watchtower opens a 360-degree view toward Fukuchiyama Castle and the mountains around the city. It is not a detached landmark but a place for telling the story of the town. Visitors encounter not only a working headquarters, but also the scale created by the castle town, river and hills.

An open forecourt faces the neighbourhood and becomes a link between the castle and the city during events. The project translates Torinago’s history and identity into a place designed to be used over time: the forecourt receives people, the roof opens the view, and the interior supports kitchen, logistics and office work. The new headquarters therefore works simultaneously as workplace, urban edge and vessel for local memory.

Design Team: ninkipen! is a first-class architect’s office founded in 2005 in Minoh, Osaka, by architect Yasuo Imazu; its roots go back to the group pen!, formed in 2000. Born in 1976, Imazu completed a master’s degree in architectural engineering at Osaka University and worked at Takeo Endo Architectural Design Office from 2001 to 2005. The practice works across architecture and interior design, supervision and furniture design.

Across its projects, the studio begins with the relationship between site and everyday activity. Geometry, material texture and light are used to calibrate scale and atmosphere, allowing houses, shops, offices and public or work spaces to respond to their context without losing functional clarity. ninkipen! is currently based in Minoh, Osaka, with Yasuo Imazu as its representative. The practice was selected for the Residential Lighting Awards 2006, and Imazu has also taught as a part-time lecturer at several universities.