Funabashi Postoffice: A Post Office Building with Window as the Entrance of Communication

Located in Funabashi, Chiba with 144 m2 in size, Funabashi Postoffice is designed by Kubo Tsushima Architects. As a Japanese post office, this building is a facility dealing with deposit, postal, and insurance services closely on the daily lives’ needs of the local resident. The window is characterized, especially its architecture design, considered as the entrance of communication.

Design

A local post office in Japan also has an important role as a facility responsible for the community formation of the area because there is a history that a local post office widespread their business by local worthies that offered for nothing a part of their buildings and lands. The building window is opened in the city as the entrance of communication and its design architecture is also characterized while adhering to a square plan. This square plan has been standardized by the JAPAN POST.

Structure

The building sits on a corner of an intersection on a busy road with several people from some shops around and parking on the north side. The site planning in this project is needed to adjust for both access because the parking is on the opposite side from the intersection. The square volume is put diagonally to seek the best angle to receive a pass of people from the intersection and to widen a pass from the parking.

Graduations are given to the facade, window size, and color to lead people to the entrance. The central postal counter inside the building has a light space with large windows. There are also a bank & insurance counter, the consult counter, and the ATM corner with small windows to protect privacy.

Funabashi Postoffice Gallery

Photography: Koji Fujii/Nacasa and Partners Inc.