The modern Noah’s Ark!

Compiled by Team IAnD

Photography: Stirling Elmendorf; courtesy v2com

Read Time: 1 min 30 secs  

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Matsuya Art Works / KTX archiLAB’s design of the new WADA flagship in Japan turns the architectural structure into a huge fixture; especially for racket-sports lovers!

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, WADA Sports is moving to a newly built headquarters and main retail shop. The new building is also a studio for Wada Bari technology, the brand’s original racket stringing technology.

 

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The interior of the shop has a gigantic elliptical metallic structure supporting the building. This design seizes the structure to turn it into a huge fixture for the rackets. Below the elliptical structure, the racket products are aligned in an originally designed fixture. The rackets are arranged in series and made easy to pick up one by one to feel the difference of touch, thickness, and weight.

 

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Above, the elliptical shape is used as a display of various valuable rackets collected from all over the country; wooden vintage rackets, rackets used by famous players, and even rackets that was miraculously saved during the great Tohoku earthquake in 2011. This collection of valuable rackets transforms the shop’s interior to look like a museum of rackets.

This new building is not only celebrating the 30 years of WADA Sports history, but it also is a modern Noah’s Ark transmitting the culture of racket sports to the next generations.

 

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Fact File:

Project: The Racket Submarine

Project Identification: WADA Sports, Flagship Store.

Client: WADA Sports

Design Company: Matsuya Art Works / KTX archiLAB.

Head Architect Designer: Tetsuya Matsumoto

Total Floor area: 412sqm

Duration of construction work: 5months

Location: Himeji City, Japan.

List of Awards in 2017

American Architecture Prize (USA)

IIDA Best of Asia Pacific Design Award (USA)

LIXIL Store Front Contest GOLD AWARD (Japan)

IDEA International Design Award FINALIST (USA)

Red Dot Design Award (Germany)

ICONIC Awards WINNER (Germany)

The Plan Award FINALIST (Italy)

A’ Design Awards PLATINUM AWARD (Italy)

A’ Design Awards GOLD AWARD (Italy)

A’ Design Awards SILVER AWARD (Italy)

Nikkei Newspaper Shop Design Awards EXCELLENCE AWARD (Japan)