Nippori Station is where the Narita line transfers to the Yamanote line. It is the first station where foreign tourists arrive, a number that has increased recently. Many foreigners move to the transfer trains while dragging their suitcases. Yanaka Ginza is located to the west side of the station. It is a popular sightseeing spot where old-fashioned townscapes are surprisingly well-preserved as they escaped war damage and the large scale development in the city center. Nippori station holds 14 train tracks. It consisted of 2 bridge outsite of ticket gate that connects west-east side of the station, and 3 bridges that connects several platform inside the ticket gates. The bridge that connects the east and west side of the city located in the north is a famous spot called the “Train Museum”, crowded with people who come to watch many kinds of trains pass on the track. In the future, where the ticket gate will be touchless and gateless, there will be nothing to separate these two bridges from each other. Exploring the use of local potential for the tourism in future, what would bridge of Nippori station will look like? The two types of bridges are connected so that people can come and go in between and a luggage service is set up on the Keisei line side. This will create an opportunity for the foreign tourists to use their spare time enjoyably while waiting for flights at Narita airport, or for the of hotel check-in, by being able to walk in Yanaka Ginza. A middle floor between the platform and the bridge is installed to develop a train museum. For the local people this intervention will become the base of spreading the culture of Yanaka Ginza to foreign countries. In the flow of local people and foreign visitors passing by each other, the fusion space of two kinds of bridges will be the meeting point where cultures form distant foreign countries meet each other. This is symbolized by the roof structure that alternately straddles the two bridges.
Hersey House
Reading Hersey House-an unbuilt project by Robert Venturi for a beach house with no particular plot-we be came fascinated by the way this small house pretends to be bigger with its thin extended roof, hiding its smallness behind a projecting porch with a big cutout circle. In our project inspired by Hersey House, we aimed to keep and reinterpret the thin roof, making it almost as big as possible, but shifting it from its central position, in order to create different spaces underneath.
We kept the clearly defined orientation of the house, designing its entrance on the opposite side to the general approach, in a way similar to Hersey House.
Looking at the plan, all rooms are set to one side, leaving room for one big open space, but unlike in Hersey house, we decided to continue this openness into the second floor, creating a loft-like space.
We reinterpreted the porch or second skin, as we like to call it, by a wooden mesh-like construction with a cantilever behind, in order to create a parking space necessary in Tokyo’s urban context and also in order to provide a somewhat playful reference to House in Uehara house by Kazuo Shinohara, situated just a few doors away.
Lastly, we decided to keep the stilts of Hersey House and adjust them to our sloping terrain, because we thought of them as characteristic of Hersey’s image. Moreover, put ting the house up on legs gives a certain hint about its origin, suggesting that it came from somewhere else.
INTESTANT RAMP
The vertical movement of elevators and the increase of flat roads that are easy to walk due to paving have brought convenience to people’s urban life. However, as roads were paved and the city became safer, people lost the behavior of paying attention to their surroundings and checking their footing.
In addition, signs at train stations and commercial fa- cilities, as well as maps on smart phones, do not make people think about where they are going; they simply follow the directions on the signs in front of them. In cities, people follow the directions of the signs and smartphone information presented to them, without checking their surroundings or even thinking about where they are.
In a world where convenience has become the norm, we designed the ramp to break that norm and awaken the physicality that people have almost forgotten. Let’s take the human act of walking back to the level of prim- itive times.
We considered the ideas of two theorists, Shusaku Arakawa and Claude Parent. Shusaku Arakawa, a con- temporary artist, said that when one is out of balance, one reverts to an infant and is freed from the world of common sense. This is what Claude Parent says in his book “Visionary Architect”. He said, “by makg movement conscious, a whole new sensory world emerges. In response to these words, we thought that by walking on a slope, we become more aware of the gravity that is placed on our bodies. Also, it would be an opportunity for people to regain their physicality, which they had forgotten until now.
This intervention consists of two vertical circulation on the façade; the first a barefoot ramp; the second, a stairway to be walked with shoes. The barefoot ramp connects the 3FL Napping-Beach and the 8th floor Tat- ami-Beach with a single path, and the steep 15 percent slope and unevenness of the floor that can be felt with bare feet remind us of the behavior of walking. By con- sidering the dead space at the intersection of the ramp and the shoes as a niche, we have created a space where people can stay in the linear flow line.
The other staircase, where people walk with their shoes, becomes a place that connects the behavior of each floor. For example, a semi-outdoor space on the 5th floor is connected to the rooftop festival, and signs made on the 4th floor are installed on each floor.
Depending on the direction of movement, the direction of gravity changes. This causes a change in the feeling and load (ascent, support, fatigue or descent, accelera- tion, elation) that we feel. Through experiences that put a strain on the body, such as being “dragged,” the senses of elation and resistance are refined. The slant of the floor, or slope, makes you feel gravity strongly even when you are standing still. You will be aware of a load that you cannot experience on a flat surface.
Because people are frequently isolated in their habita- tion, they eliminate the possibility of interaction. By walking on a slope, we are strongly aware of the gravity that is placed on our bodies. I think this will be an op- portunity for people to regain their physicality, which they have forgotten until now.
Information that works directly on the body.
Re-bridge
Using the power of a firmly established running praxis as a resource, our derived intervention aims at the reconnection of Imperial Palace and Kitanomaru Park “on foot”. Since Kitanomaru Park provides all the Intervention & expansion Architectural elements improving the running experience Running clubs New bridge as reconnection essentials identified around Imperial Palace, the switch for the (re-)connection of both areas is to bridge the dividing traffic at a wellsuited site. This site was found at the National Museum of Modern Art Crafts, whose situation can hereby be improved as well.
Ward Office Palazzo
The assignment is to design a “palazzo” in Aoyama. The site is located on the boundary of a “block”, which is a typical component of urban area in Tokyo. It is a transition area between low-dense social housing area and a main commercial street with high-rises standing along.
The concept of the project is to create two kinds of distinctive spaces in one building with open spaces in lower floors and private spaces in upper floors. It is designed to deal with the complex functions, which is supposed to be the key characteristic for a Tokyo palazzo. In consideration of the urban fabric, the volume continues the interface of the street in the same height with the next building. In the lower part, ward office is set to be the primary function, which can be a core to combine public functions for the community. There is a wide open shared space in the ground floor to link the two sides of the site and different functions are organized in the form of blocks to make the remaining part floating spaces. In the upper part, office and apartments act as introverted spaces showing another face of this building. Also, the apartments take the form of a patio in the middle to echo the two typical cases of palazzo nearby.