S P O T ／ SPOT-335

La Collina Omihachiman

ラ コリーナ近江八幡らこりーなおうみはちまん

La Collina Omihachiman is the flagship facility of the Taneya Group, a long-established Omi confectioner, opened in 2015 just outside the old merchant town of Omihachiman. Its defining feature is a vast "grass roof": the entire sweeping roof of the main shop is planted with living turf, so the building reads less like a store than like a green hill that has grown out of the surrounding rice fields. It was designed by Terunobu Fujimori—architect, architectural historian, and Japan's foremost practitioner of plant-and-earth architecture—who proposed growing real grass over a soil layer laid across the sloped roof. The turf shifts with the seasons from vivid green to dried gold, and twin triangular peaks with little dormer and smoke-vent windows poke through the surface like a house half-buried in the earth. The copper sheeting was hand-folded into waves by craftsmen, Taneya employees, and even local students; inside, the timber columns, tables, chairs, and lighting were all made from materials Fujimori selected tree by tree. Admission is free, and the immense grounds fold confectionery shops, a cafe, and the company headquarters into a single designed landscape of fields and waterways—an eccentric, beloved monument to the idea that a building can dissolve into nature.