We designed the store ‘Sazen’. It is a combination of KANJI characters meaning ‘茶tea’ and ‘全everything’. It is based on the concept of "a place where you can experience all about the tea of the Osumi region, which is one of the largest shipments in the Japan." The purpose of this store is not only to sell the goods, but also to connect people with tea and create time to blend in.

Tea has been produced in various places in Japan since ancient times and is one of the representative agricultural products of Japan that is deeply connected to Japan culture as a tea ceremony. In recent years, tea culture has begun to change significantly by the combination of history and modern technology, such as exports overseas, tea leaves other than green tea, products tailored to modern lifestyles, and production management to use of IT in agriculture.

We wondered if we could express the changing tea environment from the past to the present and to the future as a space.

Different concepts were expressed in space by three materials:
Cracked soil represents the past as the most primitive material. Wood represents the present that has been used with the improvement of metal processing technology. Then, Lime represents the future to reuse fragments of tea trees which are waste generated during harvesting, and knead into walls.

There are sales of not only products but also different types of tea leaves by weight, a communication salon where you can have an experience culture such as the tea ceremony, a gallery that introduces the history and culture of the Osumi region, and takeout and eat-in counters where you can taste various types of tea on the spot. By placing them in this space, people's movements have diverse meanings.

The back-and-forth between the past, present, and future, changes in materials, Osumi tea. It is a place where you can experience them seamlessly along with people's movements. We use recycled materials and solid wood, so the space is good for environment.