For several years now, Mr. Akira Minagawa and I have seen each other once a year at Kvadrat’s dinner in Milan. Many famous creators from all over the world would gather at this splendid dinner party, and I have the privilege of sharing a table with them. It is a precious time for an extensive dialogue through design. On such occasions, Mr. Minagawa and I would part ways saying, “Let’s do something together in Japan,” or “Let’s have dinner together,” but we have not been able to make it happen. This year, we made these things happen simultaneously: it is Yatai at Call. We created an open-air environment for pleasant outdoor dining and hosted a dinner there, just as they often do in Milan, during Designart Tokyo 2022. While such venues are hard to find in Tokyo, especially in the Aoyama area, Call, the store owned by minä perhonen is an ideal location for this purpose with a pleasant rooftop space. There, we created a place to enjoy outdoor meals using furniture. This place does not shelter you from the rain but blocks the summer sun and keeps you warm in winter. It is like a yatai (food stall) where people slip in through the noren (curtain), sit close together, and bask in each other’s warmth. Here we installed a tarp just above the head to block out the sun, and taller people need to bend over a little to get inside. Since Mr. Minagawa’s initial request was to use Altec’s Stool 60 for seating, our design featured the curved lines of Russian birch as the keynote. In the end, we used minä perhonen’s ceramic stools instead of Stool 60, resulting in the Yatai that is perfectly compatible with Call.
Title：YATAI at call
Design：Schemata Architects/Jo Nagasaka
Project team：Ou Ueno
Address：SPIRAL 5F, 5-6-23 Minami-Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0062
Usage：Restaurant
Production：TANK
Complition：April, 2022
Open：April, 2022
Photo：Schemata Architects/Koh Seki