Japanese design firm Nendo has completed its first public space project in an unused site for the new station plaza called "CoFuFun". Located at Tenri Station in Nara prefecture in the southwest region of Japan, the master plan elevates Tenri city's urban boundaries with a series of rounded precast concrete moulds, which function for multipurpose public facilities.

The existing space of Tenri city was unused for many years and the site houses a number of ancient Japanese tombs, known as "cofun". Looking at the historic presence of this area's from a different point of view, Nendo revitalized the area with giant circular platforms by adding some extra layers to public use including bicycle rentals, a cafe and other shops, an information kiosk, a play area, outdoor stage, and meeting space.

Video by Akihiro Ito

Image © Takumi Ota

"The project goal was to encourage local community revitalisation by providing a space for events, tourist information dissemination and leisure facilities for local residents," said Nendo.

"The cofun are beautiful and unmistakeable, but blend into the spaces of everyday life in the city. The plaza’s landscape, richly punctuated by several of these cofun, is a representation of the area’s characteristic geography: the Nara Basin, surrounded on all sides by mountains," added the studio.

Image © Takumi Ota

The 6,000 square-metre master plan features a special construction technique - the studio installs all the pieces of a precast concrete mould together to create a huge pizza at the site. 

All these precast concrete moulds are formed at the factory and then assembled onsite, the resulting structures are precise and the same mould can be used multiple times, ensuring excellent cost-performance. 

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"The pre-formed parts are pieced together like building blocks using the same massive cranes used to build bridges. Large spaces can be formed without the use of columns or beams, and because of the round shape the well-balanced structures offer stability against forces applied from any direction," detailed Nendo.

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Nendo's CoFuFun plaza includes different levels serving different purposes: they become stairs, benches for sitting, fences to enclose playing children, the cafe, they become stage roofs, shelves for displaying products with the nighttime lighting effect, which floods the plaza with light. 

This variety creates an environment that encourages visitors to explore and spend time in different spaces within the plaza, rather than limiting their movement to one place. It’s a ‘ambiguous’ space that’s entirely a cafe, a playground and a massive piece of furniture, all at once.

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"Guideposts and signboards feature gentle curves similar to those of the cofun, and are coloured a dark grey that creates a natural contrast while still fitting in with the surrounding area well," stated the designer of Nendo. 

"They are also arranged at four different heights according to their function in order to minimize noise levels. A play space for children, a lounge and study space for reading books, and a stage that can be used for concerts or public screenings have all been added to the meeting area, and Tenri souvenirs can be purchased at a newly designed shop next to the space."

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The studio uses special material and colouring technique to every design matching all parts of the plaza as closely as possible. Nendo sets furnitures and fixtures made of a wood - which was also taken from Nara Prefecture and designed around a cofun theme create a sense of uniformity with the plaza.

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"The plaza’s name, CoFuFun, combines the main design motif, the cofun, with colloquial Japanese expressions. "Fufun" refers to happy, unconscious humming: the design for the plaza should offer a convivial atmosphere that unconsciously leads visitors to hum, happily, while they’re there," explained  the studio.

"The alphabet spelling, "CoFuFun", also brings in the "co-" of "cooperation" and "community", as well as – of course – "fun" itself. The result is a name whose Japanese and alphabet spellings mean similar things, so that foreign visitors to the plaza will understand it in the same way, too."

Image © Takumi Ota

Nendo designs several products and spaces ranging from furniture, houseware to exhibition design and small-scaled spaces, but CoFuFun plaza is the first completed public space project of the Japanese firm.

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