Osaka Brand Center

Marui department stores in Namba (Osaka) and Yurakucho (Tokyo) are great examples of how Yoshihiko Mamiya skillfully applies his knowledge and experience of neighborhood-focused spatial design to environmental design concepts. At the Namba Marui store, Mamiya established a design concept he entitled, “Mingle.” By this, Mamiya had the idea of creating a single assembly of individual tenant shops that,　while merged, had each an accentuated individual uniqueness. In planning the store’s environment, Mamiya employed a replica of the organic process used when planning the townscape around the Minami district of Osaka. Mamiya used this so as the assembly of shops within the Namba Marui property would naturally evolve into a neighborhood microcosm. On the other hand, for the Marui Yurakucho store, Mamiya located escalators in the center of the floor plan as part of his “Enjoy Branching Out” concept.  He then drew traffic radii spreading from these loci, and arranged shops into a maze-like floor plan.  He did this to give customers an additional sense of enjoyment, derived from their strolling the aisles and discovering favorite shops. If shoppers were to get “lost” in the maze, Mamiya felt they could either retrace their steps to the center of the floor plan and restart their search, or move to different floors of the property, thus circulating freely through the designed space. Such a layout is in fact based on similar theories found in historical examples of urban design. Two examples can be seen in the vicinity of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, and in the area around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Mamiya’s idea of considering the customer traffic environment as a single neighborhood was new, in that it differed greatly from conventional department store floor plans. “I know that people would have no concept of such ideas (regarding design) unless such were explained,” says Mamiya. “I am happy as long as customers feel satisfied about the space and feel like revisiting it.” Although he says this matter-of-factly, Mamiya’s “intangible” design techniques have obviously been a key to his success in creating spaces to which peoples, cultures and energies congregate.