The site is a ground-floor tenant space in a mixed-use building located
along a main street in a calm neighborhood characterized by residential and educational areas.

The project positions the barbershop not merely as a place for grooming, but as part of the public infrastructure that supports everyday life within the community. Based on the client’s long-held philosophy of maintaining an open frontage that welcomes anyone, the design explores a more essential and community-oriented model for the barbershop, one that incorporates spatial margins people can casually enter and allows for diverse forms of occupation and use.

For BLUEBEE BARBERSHOP, which already operates multiple locations across Osaka, the project called for a shop that blends into the neighborhood while establishing a renewed presence.

The space is divided into two primary zones: an entrance area and a cut area centered around barbering activities. Between them, a wall composed of hairline-finished aluminum composite panels was inserted,
incorporating aluminum material also used in the building facade.
This intervention gently articulates the interior while creating continuity with the architecture.
Lighting integrated into the upper portion of the wall allows it to softly receive and reflect light like a metallic shade, enhancing its visibility from the exterior.
Openings within the wall are derived from functional requirements such as maintaining sightlines, providing armrest height, and ensuring circulation clearance, allowing function itself to generate the form.

Although compact, the entrance area was designed as a flexible space capable of accommodating waiting functions and retail fixtures.
The approximately 1.4-meter setback from the facade creates a place where people can pause and gather, generating incidental relationships with the surrounding community.

In the cut area, the contrast that emerges between the existing structure and newly constructed elements introduces a subtle tension within the space.
The upper 350 millimeters of the mirror backing wall was intentionally left unfinished, exposing the light-gauge steel framing (LGS) beneath.
The layers revealed through subtraction are treated directly as part of the spatial expression.
Pegboard installed over the existing concrete block wall on the west side adds flexibility for storage and display.
Working together with the waist-height shelf, these elements function as multi-purpose devices
that organize circulation while supporting various uses.

Through spatial margins, a restrained composition, and a clear configuration derived from function, the barbershop transcends a mere service space, becoming a new node within the community that
accommodates grooming, dwelling, and interaction.