Renovation of the Old Ibuka Town Office, Minokami
895 Ibuka, Minokamo, Gifu, JAPAN
| Architect | Nobuaki Furuya + Waseda Univ. Furuya Lab. |
|---|---|
| Usage | Community center, Restaurant |
| Structure | W |
| Size | 1F |
| Site area | 517.52㎡ |
| Area | 135.15㎡ |
| Completion | 2018.3 |
The former Ibuka Village office building built in 1936 is located in the center of Ibuka Town, Minokamo City, Gifu Prefecture. A facility that takes root and blends into the scenery of Ibuka with its characteristic appearance, it is designated as a registered national tangible cultural property. However, after the merging of towns and villages the town hall function was relocated, and it had been used as the residents’ association hall, but has fallen out of use due to deterioration. Afterwards, due to the opinion exchange meeting with citizens it was decided to aim for the former Ibuka village office building to become the center of tourism and town planning, a place visited by people from inside and outside the area, since it has existed as the center of the area from long ago, inheriting the local memory.
Therefore, in this renovation we conducted workshops and restoration surveys, extracted historical elements that are valuable as local cultural assets, followed the former room allocation and function, by reusing the old roof tiles as much as possible restored the characteristic appearance that has become a part of Ibuka scenery while ‘inheriting the local memory’, added seismic reinforcement and new functions, making so-called ‘modern improvements’ and updated the facility as a café to become an exchange base for the area around it.
We also considered the operation of the café by designing a ‘transparent wall’ with shelves on both sides so that the manager can have an unobstructed view from the kitchen to the village mayor’s office through the dining space. At the workshop we found out that there used to be a parent-child library and from old photos we saw that there were gateposts once. We added a space for elementary school students to read/do homework and, since there are few street lights, we added new gate post lights to illuminate the dark nights of Ibuka.
We hope that, as a new public facility that preserves the shape of the town hall that looked over the area since old times, it will become a center of interaction for fellow residents, tourism and town planning, a base for the region and beyond.
Photos: Nemoto Yuuki