Creating a Farm in the Middle of an Urban Area



Soil, is treasure for farmers said one farmer whom I talked to when we decided to use soil for design. At hearing this, we came to know the importance of soil, and their farmers feelings toward soil. We decided to make soil a key source of this project. Food self-sufficiency, that is now one of the problems in Japan due to the aging issue among current farmers, and a decrease of young ones who become farmers.

ROPPONGI-NOUEN is a place where business persons whose parents are farmers cultivate their potential to agriculture, and create new models of agricultural support that connect the urban and rural areas. We designed this place as a experimental field for introducing the gusto of food from their family farms, as well as sharing the importance of agriculture and pleasantness of it.

Presenting attractiveness of vegetables from the family farms through dishes...
To do so we suggested to create new ground on the hight of the tables. ( 1fl + 700mm)
The quality of soil adds spice to vegetables. The vegetables from family farms are cooked right in front of the customers on the new ground, and become various attractive vegetable plates.
We coated the wall with the soil table height and downward including the floor. On the first basement level, the wall, floor and ceiling are coated with same soil. We did it under the direction of plasterer
Mr.Naoki Kusumi with the workshop that is studying soil coating.

Formerly a french restaurant, we started with a clean slate for decoration. It took 2 months to finish up soil-coating process. Mainly the sons of farmers, and those who are interested in soil-coating, gathered together to work on this project. Cultivating the bases of farms as a result of their fine effort.

2009

2009

/