Fuji Grand Masaki Project

Matsuyama, Japan 

While with Charlesgroup, Ron Schafer as Senior Project Designer, developed the overall architectural character for this Regional Shopping District. The project is set adjacent to a local freeway system in the growing civic center of Matsuyama. We took advantage of the large expanse of retail store frontage, accentuating the curvature of the building edges using large slatted signage screens based on an abstraction of the Japanese Tatami mat. This abstraction allowed us to create a beautiful pedestrian friendly porousity allowing smaller kiosk based tenants to be placed in front of the larger anchor tenants. This placement activated the smaller more high value revenue stores while adding interest to the visitor experience to the main anchors. By developing this layered system we were able to feature the entries to the major tenants by breaking interupting the horizontal flow of the screens therefore focusing the visitor's attention on their signage.