The proposal for Baraike Park, designed by Tomohiro Hata Architect & Associates, consists of a shaded area in the center of the plaza formed by overlapping canopies, conceived as a grove. Located between large sports facilities such as the baseball field and the gymnasium, the installation is intended to offer a space for tranquility and gathering.
To achieve the conceptual objective, a combination of vertical and inclined columns exceeding five meters in height was used to form a layered space at different levels, alluding to fallen trees and trunks.
Baraike Park Facility by Tomohiro Hata Architect & Associates. Photograph by Toshiyuki Yano.
Project description by Tomohiro Hata Architect & Associates
The plan for a barbecue field as a central park facility developed through the Park-PFI project at Sakai City's Baraike Park. In its proposal request, Sakai City envisioned this field, located centrally within the park between facilities like the gymnasium and baseball field, becoming a vibrant hub for park activity.
Surrounded by large sports facilities like the baseball field and gymnasium, and situated at the center of an open plaza with no shelter in sight, it seemed fitting to create a place where visitors could relax and linger as they pleased, offering a spot to retreat slightly. This led to the idea of creating a shaded area, like open woodland, along the adjacent pond. This envisioned a space where actual trees and architecture blends together, allowing many people to maintain comfortable distances and spend time individually.
In other words, the aim was to create a spatial perception that invites one to enter the grove, using only a combination of vertical and inclined columns to form a space with overlapping layers at a certain density. This was a consistent approach to control the perceived space and achieve the ornamentality needed to approach the image of a grove, even treating inclined columns exceeding 5m—which also generate uplift forces—as pure manifestations of trees, like fallen logs.
