Japan’s Nagasaki Prefecture created a new landfill pier projecting into Nagasaki Harbor. The mixed-use pier has a ferry terminal, large retail structures and working warehouses. The city, outlying mountains and bay surround the site, making it visible from nearly every location around the harbor. Warehouse C’s dimensions are comparable to those of a super tanker. It is organized in three parts: a two level private warehouse on the bottom, a public roof garden, and a 20-meter diameter spherical exhibition hall. The roofscape provides a public link between the new ferry terminal, retail elements on the new wharf, and the city center. The garden will be a present day version of the traditional ‘dry’ gardens of Kyoto.

The building is a composite of three construction systems: the warehouse base is concrete, the south elevation wall system and half of the roof enclosure are steel plate and the other half of the garden is enclosed with fabric on the north side. The spherical exhibition hall is insulated steel plate normally used for LNP storage on the huge tanker ships built in Nagasaki. Each of four zones on the rooftop defines a different type of experience by modifying the scale and degree of enclosure. The twisting and undulating geometry of the fabric and steel planar systems yields a form that is a variation on the conventions of the complex planar geometries of shipbuilding. Seen from the harbor, the building might appear as a ship or evoke the image of a dragon in reference to a significant local festival, or a long lantern.