Seven years after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, about 80% of the residents have returned home in Kawauchi Village, located within 30km from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. Kawauchi Wine started producing wine in 2017, bringing a new industry to this land.

 

We were commissioned to build a tasting pavilion to sit amongst the vineyards. All of the components used in the pavilion were cut with a CNC router that Kobayashi Lab students installed in a former precision machine factory near the site. The 3.8m x 3.8m x 3.8m symbolic cube composed of a checkered pattern surfaces overlooks the vast vineyard. From here, visitors can take in the view and watch the village’s new industry grow.

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TEAM: Keio University SFC Hiroto Kobayashi Laboratory (Design, Construction), Akira Suzuki (Structural Engineering), Kawauchi Wine (Construction), and others