Kamoi Museum / TNA Architects

The Kamoi Museum, designed by Japanese Architects TNA and completed in 2012, is an old factory renovation for the KAMOI-KAKOSHI paper company in Japan. With a history of nearly 100 years, the company is famous for its Masking Tape (MT), which is made of Japanese paper and adhesive. The Architects aimed to change the factory’s dark, cold image into a bright and comfortable workspace.

Kamoi Museum Technical Information

Architects: TNA Architects
Typology: Cultural Architecture / Museum
Location: Kurashiki Okayama prefecture, Japan
Total Floor Area: 369,07 m²
Project Year: 2012
Structural Engineer: Eisuke Mitsuda
Evocative topics: Renovation, Industrial Architecture, Polycarbonate
Photographs: © Daici Ano

Rather than rebuilding just a new factory, we decided to leave the old history. We’ve made the image of the new factory from the old.

– TNA Architects

Kamoi Museum Photographs

Text by the Architects

By the balance of the strength of the Japanese paper and the power of adhesion, people will be able to cut by hand tape easily. However, it’s interesting; this company was making a flypaper founded at the start. Then, in Japan’s high-growth period, manufacturing the masking tape to be used in construction work. It has made masking tape to use for stationery now. Products have changed with the times, but the belief that it provides to society adhesive technology has not changed.

We thought the philosophy of such companies should also be applied to the building. Rather than rebuilding a new factory, we left the old history and made a new factory’s image. We focused on being a gate-shaped skeleton of the building is beautiful. And I decided to change to a building where people can work comfortably; the building was an empty warehouse.

We have inserted into building a large white atrium. We left the expression of the old factory at the top of the stairwell. And I have an additional function of the new plant at the bottom of the stairwell. While it is decreased by a steel frame on the side of the pillar at the bottom of the stairwell, to increase the structural strength, it has been removed the small bones of the building, such as a brace or stud. The volume of the warehouse is large; it is impossible to have air conditioning in the whole space.

Therefore, to partially ineffective air conditioning, we made a transparent small workspace partitioned by the glass. It is not a completely transparent, polycarbonate outer wall because it is four layers. However, light is transmitted. I have realized while protecting the confidentiality of information products, improvement of thermal insulation, to ensure the warehouse’s strength. It seems like a Japanese paper. We aimed to change it from the image of a dark, cold factory into a bright, comfortable factory.

We want to create new scenery for the factory.