The renovation project for the Nakamura Station is located on the city of Shimanto, Kochi Prefecture, 1.027km away from Tokyo. It is quite isolated from any urban cities. These areas are declining a demand for a local railway’s passengers by reason of the society depending on personal cars and suffering from depopulation. Therefore most of passengers are students and old people. This is not only a Japanese local problem, but a global problem for all over the world.
The Train schedule is only once an hour at this railway, therefore we had to rethink about “a waiting time” as a first priority.
Most of Japanese railway stations have a ticket gate for fare control even such as an isolated station. We considered it as a big barrier for passenger’s comfort. We removed the gate first, and expand an actual waiting room to the platform. Thus passengers could move freely over the barrier and finds a nice semi-outside waiting room beside the river.
We focused on “a passenger’s smile” during the waiting time. We believe their face must be beautiful, lively and sometime elegant at the public, because the station’s leading character is passenger themselves. To make lovely smile, we designed the lighting system with bench and shelves of retail all in one. It controls everything at the waiting room. At the same time we also try to make a rule for information, sign system and advertisement. The rule is thought by giving priority to human eyes.
By these design, the waiting room is kept up itself as a public space in good atmosphere.
After the renovation, a lot of young students are coming back to Nakamura station and staying for long time as a self-study room. The wonderful atmosphere is kept by the eager students. We believe they will be good passengers for next generation and solve the local and global problems one by one. The new public space is just started.
