Koban or small Police Station designed by Klein Dytham Architecture, located in Kumamoto, in the southern most island of Japan. Year of execution: 2011. Possibly the friendliest and most cheerful police station in the world (by it’s looks, at least).
After a new bullet train station was built in city of Kumamoto, the area around the station was made into a sand box for architects. The program is called Artpolis and is lead by Toyo Ito, who was the one that commissioned this police station.
Big white circles on the top part of the façade allow pastel rainbow colours painted on the inner shell to shine through:
The external colour-coding of the station is a part of architect’s interesting ideas. For anyone living in Japan it looks like a Japanese police car: white top, black bottom and red lamps. Very clever design move.
Maybe the friendliness and playfulness of the Koban’s façade was that attracted a group of very friendly school-kids, who really wanted to talk with me (I wish I knew about what) and photo-bombed some shots:
Different colours of different shades are visible when you move around the station, that makes this building very dynamic.
This part of the town has buried the power-lines and the sky of this whole area is power-line free.
Good path to take and a perfect example for an institutional architecture.
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