Kobe’s seaside area, a key element of its landscape, becomes more attractive as it is refreshed. The waterfront area, located in Shinkōchō, is also undergoing development to improve its cultural facilities, residences, and commercial facilities, and the decision was made to extensively update the waterside space at the seaside.

Across the box-shaped waterside space, we scattered plazas of varied sizes where the seaside activities unique to Kobe could congregate, thus creating new scenery. By devising the project so that visitors can frame the scenery in their photographs as they like, we have produced scenery where people’s activities themselves play a starring role, in addition to the existing magnificent night views.

Our aim was to generate new positive value for Kobe’s existing scenery. By adding a diversity of places to be, such as places where visitors can photograph scenery typical of Kobe, places where they can spend time surrounded by the sea, and places where they can get even closer to the sea, we brought the sea closer in both physical and emotional terms and formed a space where people can spend time alongside the sea, in ways only possible in Kobe.

The motif for the design is vortices on the sea (a Kármán vortex street). Each of the plazas that entice Kobe’s residents, tourists, and other people has been positioned as a vortex, linking to the others in a connected sequence, with the aim of creating ripples in people’s activities and interactions that spread throughout the site and generating new vibrancy and scenery in Shinkōchō.

We hope that this location will add new value to Kobe’s seaside and will be able to contribute to increasing the attraction of the port city of Kobe.