Japanese Ice-Cream Shop

An interior view of Rono.

Japanese designer Hiroyuki Miyake has a penchant for pumpkin ice cream. That�s one of the roughly 40 flavours available at the Rono ice-cream parlour in Tokyo.

The length of the display case limits the number of flavours on offer at any one time to seven (current assortment: almond-caramel, strawberry, honey, rum-raisin, black sesame, pumpkin and cookie-crunch), and the selection is in part determined by seasonal influences (strawberries happen to be available at the moment).

Ice cream is no minor detail here but key to the whole interior. The floor and walls are covered in tiles the designer describes as deliberately characterless � devoid of colour, texture, reflections. Miyake wanted nothing to come between customers and the happy colours in the tubs, which have the potential to induce a dreamlike state in observers and whisk them off to Italy, the land of gelati. That destination is also evoked by the plain, graphic arch etched onto the glazing to mark the doorway, inspired by buildings the designer once saw on an Italian street.

A sense of dreaminess is also prompted, Miyake explains, by the end wall, whose mirrored surface separates the space from its fictional double, which can be entered only in fairy tales. The apples that line the framed recess in the mirrored wall are another allusion to childhood favourites like �Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs�.

Words Billy Nolan
Photos Rikoh Adachi

Posted by Roos Slot