Tato Architects / Yo Shimada

Kobe Central Municipal Library — Entrance Renovation

Location: Chuo-ku, Kobe, Hyogo
Principal use: Library

Architects

Tato Architects
In charge: Yo Shimada, Ninnojo Hara, Yuya Yamaguchi* (*former staff)

Signage and graphics

UMA/design farm
In charge: Yuma Harada, Ryosuke Nishino

General contractor

Mizoguchi Kensetsu

Furniture fabrication

Otsuka

Sign fabrication

Okawa

Scale

Design area: 311.93 m²

Completion

2025

We came to undertake the renovation of the entrance of Kobe City Central Library through a design proposal competition in 2025. The library looks back on more than a century of history since its founding, and its current building was designed by Azusa Kito, a pioneer of postwar Japanese public library architecture. Our aim was to update the entrance space to reflect what a library can be today, while paying the utmost respect to the qualities the existing building has cultivated over the years — the orderly composition created by its brick walls and concrete columns.

Our original proposal contained a great number of ideas. As our meetings went on, however, it became clear that what the librarians hoped for was not a dramatic transformation of the space. As a result, the renovation settled into a gentle design — one that adjusts the tone of the existing place rather than remaking it.

We designed fixtures that carry on the arcs found in the existing plan, sorted out the tangled circulation, reduced the number of book detection gates (BDS), and carefully prepared places for posters and leaflets. The floor was re-laid with a mosaic-like carpet based on green and blue, Kobe’s theme colours, blurring the boundary with the existing areas while creating a visual flow that gently draws visitors into the library. The L-shaped exhibition walls are movable: one side is a pinboard finished with a linseed-oil-based board that pins push into easily, while the other is perforated plywood to which various parts can be freely attached.

The renovated parts add accent colours while maintaining respect for the existing space, and by using wood as the principal material we sought to achieve both a warm presence and consideration for small children. The beauty of the brick and concrete that Kito left behind is revived all the more vividly by removing extraneous elements from the walls — and by adding nothing new to them.