Mr.CHEESECAKE NAGOYA

A project for Mr. CHEESECAKE's Nagoya Sakae store—the brand's first location in the Tōkai region.

While preserving the brand's foundational idea of "setting the stage for deliciousness," we sought to broaden its worldview by giving the space a character found nowhere else. To express this sense of place, we turned to two materials drawn from Aichi's traditional crafts: Seto ware and Arimatsu shibori.

Seto ware is distinguished by its soft, pale body and the diverse expressions that emerge through its glazes. Its unglazed, bisque-fired state—able to take on any character—and its capacity for wide-ranging expression while drawing out the inherent appeal of the material itself, resonate with the brand's philosophy of letting materials speak quietly rather than adorning them. We produced custom tiles from Seto clay and wove them into the space as its overall texture.

Arimatsu shibori is a cotton tie-dyeing craft of the Arimatsu and Narumi districts of Nagoya. The uneven, natural expression born from binding and tying each piece by hand resonates with the brand's care for the fluctuations of the human touch. We introduced it into the noren curtain dividing the café seating from the shared area—left undyed, so that only the creases and shadows created by the binding emerge quietly. This ambiguous quality, lying somewhere between object and material, is woven in as an element that sets the stage for the space.

In crafting plaster, custom tiles, and the Arimatsu shibori noren—materials that could not be expressed through ready-made products and had to be made from scratch—a delicate balance was struck between honoring the traces of the human hand and the fluctuations of the material, and maintaining the precision a retail space demands. By deliberately limiting where these materials are used, quiet planes of negative space and background emerge, drawing the eye naturally toward the products, displays, and spaces prepared for hospitality.

Furnishings of a plain, warm, and gentle character, formed from custom Seto-clay tiles and plaster. A refined brand image, and the warmth of materials rooted in their place. By holding these two contrasting qualities together, we have created a space where the brand's philosophy is conveyed warmly and quietly.