Photography:Yutaka Naito

Located to the east of Lake Biwa, this regional interaction facility was built in Koura-cho, which is renowned nationwide for its water utilization.
This building was based on the concepts "the warmth of wood", "the calm from meticulously selected materials", "the gentleness of light and breeze", and "flexible cohesion". Where-ever possible, the pure wood structure was built using local resources such as cedar and cypress, Koura-cho wood, and a compacted cedar laminated wood material newly developed in Japan, and is a "Pioneering wood-based public facilities project" of the Forestry Agency leading to regional development with distinctive character and the promotion of forestry management.
In addition, assuming that the facility would be utilized in times of disaster, the importance factor of the aseismatic design is 1.25, and an emergency hybrid solar power generation system has been installed.