A racket shop as a modern-day Noah’s Ark

Plan

plan

A modern-day Noah’s Ark to convey the culture of racket sports to the next generation

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, WADA Sports is moving to a newly built headquarter and main retail shop. The New building 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 while imitating the shape of a racket.

Bellow 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.

CG

The building structure as a giant fixture

The building structure itself acts as a giant fixture. The cashier’s counter is located at the front rear of the shop, and overhead is the ‘Wada-bari’ stage, lined with machines for stretching guts on rackets.

on Construction

Photography

Conventional racket fixtures display rackets stacked on hooks that protrude vertically from the wall, facing forward. Therefore, in order to pick up a racket hung at the back, the racket in the front must be removed first.

As there are many variations of rackets in the same series, such as weight and grip thickness, athletes who choose a racket need to feel each one in their hands, which is a very cumbersome task in conventional fixtures due to the aforementioned circumstances. This can be stressful.

In addition, the rackets bump against each other during this process, which easily scratches the rackets and causes stress on the sales side. To solve this problem, we developed a display fixture that is easy to pick up by displaying the rackets vertically, and also by ergonomically adjusting the height and angle of the rackets.

Awards

  • GOOD DESIGN 2021
  • MUSE DESIGN AWARDS 2019
  • Interior Design Best of Year Honoree 2018
  • A’DESIGN AWARD 2018
  • JCD BEST100
  • ABB LEAF
  • ARCHITECTURE MASTERPRIZE
  • GOOD DESIGN AWARD 2018
  • IIDA Global Excellence Award Winner 2017

Video

Media

  • Yearbook Japanese Space Design 2019
  • AN
  • JDN
  • goodesign
  • Journal Du Design
  • e-architect
  • yatzer
  • 90GRADOS
  • BERLOGOS

Client Data

Client
Wada Sport Inc.
Category
Sporting goods retailers
Role
New construction
Duration
5month
Gross Area
412.42㎡
Location
Sakaue 102-3,Aboshiku Himeji, Hyogo, Japan
Website
wada-sports.com