This café, located just outside a lively Kobe district, is housed in a former barber. The three letters above the entrance, “AAA”, are a trace of its previous use, which reminds visitors of the site’s history. The façade, which extended to the street, was set back and opened like a front glass, with the aim of creating a typical ENGAWA, a traditionally Japanese threshold between the street and the interior of the store, where guests can sit back and enjoy drinks while they are protected by a roof. This addition makes the store feel deeper, and therefore more spacious than before. The storefront incorporates a series of unusual strategies that are meant to temporarily remove visitors, giving them pause and the chance to take a closer look at the details. Take, for example, the lower half of the front, which is made of glass blocks stacked on top of each other. While glass bricks are usually held in place by a general metal structure, these elements are held together by binder cement alone. The door handle is made of two sheets of glass, glued with a special adhesive on both sides of the door. The result is a completely transparent door, which allows guests to appreciate the natural shades of the material itself. The interior is characterized by a glass and steel cupboard, whose gullwing mechanism was developed by Yusuke Seki specifically for this shop.

Almost all of the structural elements were left as they were found during the demolition process. The wooden screen below the ceiling, for example, is the original timber frame that held up the suspended ceiling in the space’s former life, rediscovered as workers removed the plaster that had hidden it for years. The walls, too, have been left as they were after the workers had removed the finish covering them. Paradoxically, this subtractive approach has an accumulative effect: every detail come to light, every inscription left behind by a worker a generation ago, serves to make history visible, adds to the sense of time passing. This sense is heightened by a special detail: a layer of silver leaf, barely appreciable, applied to the wall near the back of the store. Over time, as the silver oxidizes, this square will change colors to a warm gold.