STEPPERS RECORDS
- Project name: STEPPERS RECORDS
- Completion Date: 2005.05.25
- Type: Interior Design
- Location: Harajyuku, Toyko, JAPAN
- Total Floor Area: 10.68 sqm
- URL: http://www.steppers.jp/
- Photo: Yusuke Wakabayashi
- Awards: JCD Design Award 2006 Best 100 + JURY Award ( Kundo Koyama ), Designers Compact Shop BEST100
Recently, record shops have changed their sales methods to offer mail-order services due to the growing rate of Internet access around the world, which at the same time, marginalizes record shops. Although it is a good and convenient way to find something that you want to buy, the Internet offers fewer opportunities for direct communication. In record shops, you can choose records while you talk with people, and at the same time, enjoy communication through music. We expect communication will blossom, which is the intrinsic universal value of musical appreciation, and therefore, this shop has no listening booth.
Designing the “Music”
When we designed the interior, “Light” is always an important factor to be considered. Although “Music” is supposed to be an important element along with the “Light”, it has fewer choices in the present interior designing.
We have reaffirmed the significance of “Music”, with a designed sound system, incorporating tube amps and speakers, in co-operation with craft workers from the beginning of layout in order to meet the concept of a record shop with no music sampling machines.
Therefore we have succeeded to create ear-pleasing sounds, which seem to be produced from nowhere, and produce communications with a great quality of sound by speakers which look like ducts on the ceiling.
“Uraharajuku” in transition
The property is located in an area know as the “Junk Yard”, which used to be the centre of the so-called “Uraharajuku”. The owner of the shop desired to comprehensively introduce the essence of music. Therefore, we considered the finish and details in order to differentiate itself from other neighborhood shops, while remaining open and accessible to urban spaces, by hanging record tracks from the ceiling, and sectioning the shop with transparent patchwork canvas set into the entrance.
We hope that someday this small space, full of passions, will be a centre of a new movement where communication will occur
