AnicoPark was a one year “movable feast” pet cafe. As the spacious lot across Anicom Holding’s home office in Shinjuku, Tokyo opened up for two years between the raising and the construction of skyscrapers, we were allowed to use the 700+ square meters for a pet friendly outdoor cafe. We had no architectural license to build on the land though as the city already had it under permit with another company. We could put anything on the land that didn’t go more than 2 meters in the ground. That left trailers and a deck.

The original design had led lighting strewn throughout the wood deck as well as automated robot wait staff which ended up being outside the company budget. As well, first draft had a large Spanish olive tree as the centerpiece. The tree ended up being a part of the park but got put off to one side. When the park closed it was to go to a rooftop garden at a genetics lab in Kobe that we designed and never built. The tree died on the top floor of a Tokyo office building from lack of sun (the glass in high-rises tends to block UV rays). Multiple heart breaks over that project.