Oita-city, Japan

Banquet Hall

Photo: Kaori Ichikawa, courtesy of Takao Shiotsuka Atelier

‘Banquet hall’ is the hall to hold a casual party or wedding reception of around 80 persons.

Photo: Kaori Ichikawa, courtesy of Takao Shiotsuka Atelier

The site is located on a hill overlooking a town area. An existing building on the site (the area is about 130 square meters) is assigned as a kitchen, waiting rooms and staff rooms.

Photo: Kaori Ichikawa, courtesy of Takao Shiotsuka Atelier

Therefore only the hall is newly built. These two buildings are connected by a roofed passage.

Photo: Kaori Ichikawa, courtesy of Takao Shiotsuka Atelier

The floor plan of the hall has rectangular shape of 10 by 23 meters. This is decided by the

Photo: Kaori Ichikawa, courtesy of Takao Shiotsuka Atelier

arrangement of tables and chairs for 80 persons. We tried to make this space without any boring impression to the guests. Nevertheless, without losing a function as one large room.

Photo: Kaori Ichikawa, courtesy of Takao Shiotsuka Atelier

Generally, ceiling height is decided by a use. In addition, ceiling height sometimes lets them

Image courtesy of Takao Shiotsuka Atelier

imagine a use of a room. In a word, housing, office and gymnasium have different ceiling height in each. That is, operating the ‘ceiling height’ can make some spaces of different characters in one space at the same time. As a result, guests will have various impressions in only one space.

Therefore we set up five different ceiling heights in one space ~~they are 2,350, 2,800, 3,325, 3,925 and 4,600mm~~. These ceilings are arranged in order of their heights to be able to see through the whole hall. The roofline like a tiered stand fit in with the hill ground to regard the relations between the building and the topographical features around. The approach road is lower than the placement level of the building. Therefore the lowest ceiling height is placed on the approach side to make reduce the oppression given by height.

Each five roofs of thickness of 600mm have different ceiling height and make slit to get sunlight inside.

These five volumes in the hall are also divided structurally, that is, each volume has four columns to become independent and they are not jointed.

The outer wall as the secondary building element is built outside of the columns. It frames the outside view and controls the sunlight like a blind. Its gradation of warm color gives the building appearance flowery image, just like a gift-wrapping.

Europaconcorsi Beta

Banquet Hall