Turning the architectural structure into a huge fixture.
To celebrate its 30th anniversary, WADA Sports is moving to a newly built headquarter and main retail shop.
Matsuya Art Works/KTX archiLAB and lead architect, Tetsuya Matsumoto, have created a tennis-lover’s dream store.
Located in a new building, it is also a studio for Wada Bari technology, the brand’s original racket stringing technology.
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. 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.
Project The Racket Submarine
Client WADA Sports
Location Himeji City, Japan
Area 412 sqm
Designers Matsuya Art Works / KTX archiLAB
Head Architect Designer Tetsuya Matsumoto
Photos courtesy © Stirling Elmendorf
Matsuya Art Works / KTX archiLAB
Established in 1976, Matsuya-Art-Works is a four decades company acting in the architecture, design and construction industries. The company has a wide range of building types in the portfolio, though specialized in commercial projects. Its projects go beyond the reception of the finalized space to guarantee a good functioning of the business. The KTX archiLAB was founded in 2006 to sustain this activity by producing high quality designs. The Japanese based company has received numerous local and international awards for its projects conducted both in Japan and foreign countries.
by AN shopfitting magazine no.143 ©