Sriracha, Thailand.
9,900 sq.m.

A Japanese Village in a Building

J-Park Sriracha Phase 2 : New Town Zone is an extension to its Phase 1 - the Old Town Zone - of J-Park Sriracha Nihon Mura - a Japanese-themed Mall in a concept of ‘Nihon Mura’ – a Japanese Village’. This concept thoroughly applied to the master planning of the Phase 1. Rentable rooms are designed as separate houses spreaded around open spaces while circulations were designed as alleyways, creating a sense of walking through the famous Kyoto’s Pontocho Area in Sriracha, a town famously known as ‘little Osaka’ in Thailand thanks to a high number of Japanese population.

The New Town Zone continues the spirit of a Japanese Village but in a completely different design strategy. Due to the limited site area, the almost 10,000 sq.m. floor area must be accommodate in the form of a ‘building’ with maximum footprint on maximum buildable land area. This resulted in a building with a very big given footprint of almost 50*100 meters, a constraint completely opposite to a conventional concept of a ‘village’.

The design, however, aim to create much-needed 3-dimensional intimacy in every aspect in order to break the enormous scale of a building down to domestic scale - the living spaces of houses and villages - and and to create a Japanese sense of making things with great attention to little details. This resulted in creating interrelated and enjoyable sequence of spaces which each has different characters - from bridges, halls, alleyways and high-streets - while creating a full continuous shopping loop with the Old Town zone where there shopping experience flows lively and there is no dead-end to any corner of the whole compound.

Architectural elements in each spaces are also designed in its own sub-character while maintaining the core concept of applying the Japanese woodworking craftsmanship and tectonic in every scale. This made all the spaces intimate from a touching distance and from afar, especially with different roof angles and scales on top of each spaces, creating a village-like outline to a very big building footprint. Indirect-based lighting design strategy also make sure each element has a hidden shadow and dimension, also from a touching distance and from afar.

A building of a Japanese-themed mall in Chonburi, Thailand sounds international, however, its scale, detail and spirit of a village are, in this sense,

domestic.