Located within a department store, Papabubble at Tokyo Daimaru is the latest in a chain of handmade candy shops and architect Jo Nagasaka explained how he wanted customers to be able to watch the sweet-making process over the counter.

"We designed a large counter where they do all works such as melting sugar, making patterns, cutting, wrapping and selling," he said.

The concrete counter folds around the kiosk and displays the rounded edges and creases of its fabric mould. "We made the concrete with an uncommon method, but it was not easy," Nagasaka told Dezeen. "The concrete pressure is very heavy, but we found a hard enough textile finally."

Glass panels create transparent screens around some of the preparation areas, while a wall of glazed black tiles provides a shopfront for displaying signage and hanging products.

We've previously featured another Papabubble sweet shop in Japan, where colourful liquids are displayed inside glass decanters.

Other projects by Schemata Architecture Office on Dezeen include a store for skincare brand Aesop, a food-photography studio and an office with a slide hidden behind a mirrored wall. See more stories about Schemata Architecture Office.

Here's a project description from Schemata Architecture Office:

Papabubble Shop

We designed a shop for Papabubble, a world-famous brand of artistic hand-made candies based in Barcelona. This is their first shop to be opened at major department stores in Japan. It is located on B1F at Tokyo Daimaru Department Store, next to Tokyo Station, and we wanted to take advantage of this great location to promote Papabubble’s exquisite artistry and design skills and show their excellence over other similar brands.

Papabubble offers variety of delicious candies-but they not just enjoyable to taste, but also very delightful for the eyes. Their artistic patterns and colors are so impressive that we often wonder how they make such beautiful candies. So we decided to show customers the entire process of their candy making.

We designed a large counter where they do all works such as melting sugar, making patterns, cutting, wrapping and selling. We enveloped backyard area including structural column and storage, and wrapped around the 900 mm high counter with glass so that customers can look over the entire shop. The counter is made of concrete. Concrete is not always heavy, cold and hard-edged like we usually imagine. We used fabric mold to cast concrete, and expressed softness, plasticity and warmness of the material. By touching and looking at this counter we want customers to recognize the original nature of the material.

In the same way we want customers to fully enjoy the Papabubble magic by visually experiencing their intricate making process- and see how sugar magically turns into such beautiful candies.

Location: B1F, Tokyo Daimaru Department Store, Tokyo, Japan
Opening date: October 5, 2012

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by Schemata Architecture Office appeared first on Dezeen.

Seki designed the interior of the Papabubble store, while Hayón designed the glass containers, utensils and window details.

The interior walls are covered with white tiles that were sourced to match the 40-year-old ones that clad the exterior of the building.

Windows shaped as diamonds and octagons are arranged in rows across the doors like chocolates laid out in a tray.

Dezeen filmed an interview with Jaime Hayón during the 2010 London Design Festival - watch it here.

See all our stories about Jaime Hayón »
See images of the best shops from Dezeen on our Pinterest board »

Photography is by Takumi Ota.

Here's some more text from the designers:

Papabubble the artisan candy shop in Yokohama was designed by Japanese designer Yusuke Seki collaboration with Jaime Hayon.

Papabubble - Caramels Artesans started in Barcelona in 2004, and has since launched all over the world. The candies are all hand made, and shows the process of making candy for a customer, and in doing so, entertaining kids and adult viewers alike.

The shop design resembles a laboratory, and shows off the finely presented handmade look of these experimental candies.

"Papabubble " Yokohama launch:

Yokohama brunch is the third shop in Japan. The difference between this shop and most others is that it is especially design focused. Up until now, Papabubble shop has been a designed based on a laboratory style. However, this latest store was designed by Yusuke Seki with Jaime Hayon, and you can trace their strong and unique design values in the fine decorative details of the work. The location is an office area in Yokohama - a bay nearby Tokyo - and the store was lacerated street level of a building which was built about forty years ago, which meant Seki needed to embark upon extensive renovation to the building.

In emphasizing the new aspects of this design, Seki managed to create a strong correlation between INSIDE / OUTSIDE method.

Not only designing focus on interior design as physical territory of place to illuminate, but also Yusuke was integrate all relevant material such as location, architecture skin, time.

Using same element retrospectively, Yusuke create explore and cross over time scale but also interior wall are being part of facade and continually.

For the purposes of continuity, Seki found and used the same tile material which was use on out side wall forty year ago.This helps the outside wall for the interior wall, helping to ensure the authentic facade of the original building.

Because Seki's space are seems simplicity and design focus on presence of space, Jaime took on the challenge of decorating the space in a way that added a stronger sense of character and identity. Ordinarily, Papabubble stores use laboratory tools to demonstrate the experimental process of making candy, but on this occasion Jaime design these tools deliberately with more personality and defined detail such as windows, utensils. Bottles are designed by Jaime, was inspired from the performance of candy by artisans.

Especially the bottles are normally icon of Papabubble store, but this time, these are one-off original made by Massimo Lunardon from venice.

These stunning crystal glasses are coloured by range type of liquid, this made the difference of design from other Papabubble brunch in all over the world.

Client: Papabubble
Art Direction, Interior design: Yusuke Seki
Furniture Design: Jaime Hayon

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and Jaime Hayón appeared first on Dezeen.