Kawagoe U_PLACE

U_PLACE sits at the west exit of JR Kawagoe Station and opened on June 8, 2020 as a mixed-use complex combining retail, administrative and hotel functions. The east side of Kawagoe Station is the commercial district known as Little Edo, where historic atmosphere and festivals draw tourists; in recent years the west exit has also been renewed, with Westa Kawagoe completed in 2015 injecting new cultural and artistic life. Developed by the same developer as Westa Kawagoe, U_PLACE was landscape-designed by Toda Kazuyuki Landscape Design Institute, with Kazuyuki Toda and Daisuke Horii leading the team. Generous open space and green paths have long defined Kawagoe, and the project uses a contemporary design language to produce a new kind of scenery the city has not seen before. On the retail floors one and two, indoor-outdoor benches are shared between inside and outside, and large graphic concrete pavers carry lines that trace the flow of pedestrians through the block, tightening the relationship between interior and exterior. Public seating, gray transitional space and a green wall are arranged to invite lingering, and a rooftop garden is visible from inside. Because the pandemic made people more attentive to social distance, U_PLACE's outdoor and semi-outdoor rooms turned out livelier than expected, and the project is positioned as a model for a new Kawagoe lifestyle that blends commercial energy with green, open-air comfort.