No sooner do we publish a glut of Nendo's designs to be launched at the Salone in Milan, (see yesterday's post here) we then hear of a new interior just completed by the industrious Japanese design studio.
Naturally, we had to show you this too...
Their design for a 'parent and child cafe' is located in Aoyama, Tokyo, and comes fully stocked with picture books and toys.
The overall plan includes a playroom, private rooms and separate spaces for nursing and changing nappies. Wide aisles make it easy to move around with prams, and light switches and door handles are placed high up to keep children from using them.
But the design goes beyond these practical issues since the cafe is designed to be enjoyed by two very different sizes of users - 'parents' and 'small children', so the interior plays on this difference in scale. These two groups also see the world through different eyes.
Take for instance, a table. Adults live their lives aware of tabletops, and the things placed on top of them, but children see the table's underside. A table's legs can look like pillars, and the reverse of the tabletop is like a roof.
The cafe's 'absolutely huge' and 'absolutely tiny' furnishings take advantage of these two perspectives, both of the adult's and the child's. A nursing sofa becomes a playroom when blown up on a massive scale, and a diaper changing table when shrunk to minuscule proportions. Big windows pair with small ones, big lightbulbs with small ones and even the floorboards vary in size.
Then there are the hidden details. The undersides of tables, where parents eyes don't reach, hide pictures of parent and baby animals. In fact, 'parents and children' can be found all around the cafe, ready for their parent and child visitors.
A super cute concept which gets a big M.E. thumbs up.
Photography Jimmy Cohrssen
