Kyushu Japan Railway Company Kumamoto Branch

The new Kumamoto branch of Kyushu Railway Company was planned for a site under an elevated railway section on the north side of Kumamoto Station. Kyushu Railway Company is actively using locally-grown timber to add wooden finishes to its rolling stock, station buildings, and elsewhere. Therefore, this building also uses local timber for its wooden structure. In particular, we tried using “CLT” (cross-laminated timber), a new wooden construction material, under the elevated railway. The building we formed from CLT, which was made from local timber, achieves innovation and community contribution, and forms spaces that give a feeling of the warmth of wood. This building made use of the “Project to validate the insulative performance effects of business facilities which use timber,” which is a subsidy project by the Ministry of the Environment. It will be used over the next several years to validate the energy-saving and CO₂-reduction effects of CLT.