Designer Emmanuelle Moureaux has brought her trademark colour spectrum to a fourth bank branch in Japan by surrounding the facade with brightly coloured sticks (+ slideshow).

The Tokyo-based French designer wanted to visually tie together the interior of the bank and the street beyond, so she added 29 vertical rods outside the glass facade and 19 behind it.

"This rainbow shower returns colours and some room for playfulness back to the town," explains the design team.

When the bank is open, the glass panels pivot open to let visitors through to an indoor terrace filled with an assortment of colourful chairs.

Two glazed courtyards separate this informal meeting area from the rest of the bank. Each one appears as a glass vitrine and contains bamboo trees intended to reflect the verticality of the sticks.

Located in Ekoda, near Tokyo, this is the fourth Sugamo Shinkin Bank designed by Emmanuelle Moureaux. Others include a Tokyo branch with horizontal bands of colour and a Tokiwadai branch with colourful window recesses. See more banks on Dezeen.

Moureaux has also used coloured sticks in furniture design and previously launched the Stick Chair with narrow rods for legs. See more design by Emmanuelle Moureaux.

Here's a project description from the design team:

Sugamo Shinkin Bank / Ekoda branch

Concept: rainbow shower

Sugamo Shinkin Bank is a credit union that strives to provide first-rate hospitality to its customers in accordance with its motto: "we take pleasure in serving happy customers". Ekoda is the forth branch (third for designing the entire building) Emmanuelle Moureaux designs, responding to the client's expectation: "creating a bank the customers feel happy to visit".

The site is located in a commercial district with many stores. The site's closeness to the town's activities – also the heavy traffic and narrow sidewalk – inspired the architect to express this proximity in the building by merging the exterior and interior.

The building is offset approximately two metres from the property line, and the timber-decked peripheral space is filled with colourful 9 metre-tall sticks. These 29 exterior sticks, reflected on the transparent glazed façade, mix naturally with the 19 interior sticks placed randomly inside the building. This rainbow shower returns colours and some room for playfulness back to the town.

Entering the building, the visitors would notice that they are still in an exterior courtyard leading to the bank's interior. Here also, the inside and outside are integrated. Walking around the glazed courtyard inside, there is a cafe-like open space filled with natural light. The bamboos in the courtyard extend skyward in concert with the colourful sticks.

The exterior deck space, interior open space, exterior courtyard, and the interior teller counters compose four layers of spaces. The layers are reflected on the glazing, and, combined with complex shadows, they create depth in the space.

Above: site plan - click for larger image