The 'JRE Local Hub', a local workplace, is a project in Tsubame-Sanjo, Niigata Prefecture, a town famous for metalworking, to realise the" East Japan Railway Company" policy of 'enriching local regions' by connecting the technology and people of the Tsubame-Sanjo area across areas and generations, and developing local industry and human resources.

The JRE Local Hub has two roles: first, it is a co-working space. The Tsubame-Sanjo area is home to more than 700 metalworking-related companies, and many business people from the Tokyo metropolitan area and elsewhere visit the area for business meetings. However, the Shinkansen bullet trains stop approximately once an hour. The co-working space and meeting rooms are equipped so that work can be done in the gap time before the train departs.

The second is a new initiative unique to this facility: business matching. A 'manufacturing concierge' is stationed at the Factory information center and is able to introduce more than 100 local factories. One of the issues facing the city today is that many factories exist as tertiary or quaternary subcontractors to major manufacturers, dividing their work into single processes such as cutting, pressing and polishing, and building a system to manufacture products throughout the region, but despite their high manufacturing technology, their products have low added value, there is a chronic shortage of labour and no successors The number of businesses going out of business is increasing.

Against this backdrop, the local company Dots & Lines developed a concierge business to support the development of products in response to requests from companies considering new manufacturing, by treating the region as a single factory in collaboration with a large number of partner factories. The idea for the facility was born out of the belief that the two companies' businesses could solve the problem.

My concept was to create a space that would evoke the image of a factory in this location, inspired by the factory landscape that dotted the streets of Tsubame-Sanjo.

Materials used included slate corrugated sheets for the exterior of the factory, a working space with roller conveyors and vinyl curtains. Metal materials and fixtures were produced in collaboration with the Tsubame-Sanjo factories. Products made with Tsubame-Sanjo technology are displayed on a roller conveyor at the reception counter in the Factory information center. The fixtures have also been designed to match the cards introducing Tsubame-Sanjo matching companies. Container boxes neatly lined up on shelves at the back contain parts of the products and technologies of the Tsubame-Sanjo matching enterprises.

The design redefines materials and functions for this facility, imagining the future of the factory. This facility is a sustainable initiative by East Japan Railway Company, a passenger company, to utilise the strengths of the station, and is a new form of public and social interaction.