Kamiya Architects Comes Full Circle in Designing a Flagship Sweet Shop in Nagoya

Japanese pastry and dessert chefs have made the red bean-wrapped-rice ball treat known as ohagi since the Edo period. This year, the country’s Ohagi3 brand seeks to take the globular treat global with an ambitious international expansion anchored by a flagship in a new commercial complex in Nagoya. They brought in Kamiya Architects not just to design the 128-square-foot interior, but the entire branding enterprise.

“The project is not a design for a single store, but a design system for a multi-store development,” says founder and creative director Shuhei Kamiya. It centers around a plywood circle—376 in fact—that can be arranged and rearranged into room dividers, pendant lights, table bases, and even, with a small infill, tabletops. 

Walls and counters are pretty in pink, while soft gray poufs intersperse with bent-wood stools. Everything is modular and, with the emphasis on plywood, environmentally sensitive. “What makes this design system unique is that it combines the iconic circle design with circular sustainability by craftsmanship. We call this Circular Design by Circle,” says Kamiya. We call it a pretty sweet idea.