Granny.F by Hiroyuki Miyake

Photographer: Rikoh Adachi

This beauty salon located in Toyokawa, Aichi, was a renovation of the existing building.
The concept replicated the archetypal image of a house, that which anyone could identify in picture books, by arranging the windows equidistant to each other and making use of the existing steep angle of the roof to simplify the building.

The randomly graduated tile pattern is based on an old British brick wall, and expresses the novel nature within tradition. As the sun sets the tiles gradually lose their colour, becoming one large background which projects the expression of a town in constant change, such as the sky at sunset and the headlights of a passing car. By minimising the lighting to the exterior, the light from the equally spaced windows is emphasised. Through these windows, a homely atmosphere is glimpsed from fragments of the occupants' daily lives within. The salon is a place where the human being takes centre stage to create beauty. The fabric of the building is a backdrop to this performance.

The naked bulbs of pendant lights, hung at random, lend colour and luminescence to the symmetrical space. Tiles in perfect proportion to the windows and doors line their openings like a skin, stopping abruptly upon contact with the dim grey mortar of the interior walls. The energy of the exterior tiles is allowed to flow into the shampoo booth, with subtle lighting streaming down their graduated pattern to subsume the customer in nostalgic relaxation.

A shampoo booth is positioning called the exterior, being in an inside by choosing the same tile as an outer wall.
The tile which is visible to the opening side of an outer wall or a partition wall is settled like "skin", and the gray space is emphasizing "inner side."

Hiroyuki Miyake Design Studio

Photographer: Rikoh Adachi