Frug House

Both the Frog House and the Gae House played important roles in shaping our design. Generally speking, these two projects can be respectively described as either a chimney with two facades or else a building with a big roof.

The main concept from the Frug House is its ambiguity, with its two facades, or faces. One on these is symmetrical and open, with large “eyes”, and the other is dug-in and shows the complex interior of the house with its various shapes and materials. Both these faces are emphasized in our perspectives. The chimney is kept because of its important position in the Frug House as well as for the design limitations and possibilities it creates. Our idea of a big roof is connected with Bow-Wow’s Gae House. Here, the roof pitch was determined by local regulations in this mostly residential area. The large-size front window makes the house more difficult to “perceive”, and this idea can be traced in both the Frug House and the Gae House.

The foursquare plan derives from the traditional Japanese “ta” character for the shape of a rice field; it consists of a simple division of the square-shaped plan into four equal quadrants. Both staircase and chimney are set in the same quadrant, forcing the stairs to dance round the chimney on the way up or down.

In our pespectives we reveal the ambiguity of our design. The symmetrical facade with its large window and hat-like roof that imitates a typical house shape dominates the first one. The second shows the playful asymmetrical backside.

Liner Community

The Ebisu site for some historical reasons became the current slender shape. Our group first look into such sites in Tokyo to find the community of the slender type of site in Tokyo.
Then we find that Ebisu is dominated by young generation, however, the area is one of the highest land price in Tokyo. So there’s a contradiction that Ebisu is mainly for young generation who cannot afford to live there.
Our design goal is to make an affordable residence office complex for young generation in the specific area of Ebisu. The design makes vertical common space from ground level (gallery) to the top (roof garden), connection and organizing all rooms in every level. The common space contents kitchens, refreshing rooms, meeting rooms, and activity rooms etc. The common space goes up in a spiral way so that people can get a whole view of both the road and the river. Rooms are situated at south facing the river and courtyard enclosed by surrounding buildings, at the same time, offices are facing north and connected to the corridor

VERTICAL FARM

LIVELIHOOD UPROOTED, COMMONS EMACIATED

My mother has a vegetable garden as a hobby while she works. Amagasaki’s grandfather also makes a living from farming. There is a fundamental joy of life, as if one is rooted in the land through plants. However, in a capitalist society, there is more than that. When the logic of capital is brought into the business of hobbies to an excessive degree, our live- lihood becomes labor, and we are “uprooted “1. The healthy ecology, that is, The linkage between the “public,” “private,” and the “commons” which was supported by the layers of nature, has been bloated and destroyed by the influx of com- modified goods and service substitutes2 (Fig. 1). Production has been black-boxed by industry, and the commons and our convivial joy rooted in it have been emaciated.

DISCONNECTION BETWEEN HOBBY-LIKE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION IN IKEBUKURO

We can also see this effect in the behavior of the city we observed in Ikebukuro. For example, we can see that one of the buildings has gardening plants growing out of the building, and on the other side, there is a Halal restaurant (Fig. 2), but even if vegetables are growing in the garden, they are not eaten in the restaurant next door. In Ikebukuro, you can see many gardens, but even if there are vegetables nearby, you cannot eat them. In Ikebukuro, there is a com- plete disconnect between consumption and the production of individual skills, even though they are often adjacent to each other. Architecture must become the infrastructure that connects the desire for the pleasure of growing plants with consumption, making plants com mon and creating a small cycle.

STRATEGY FOR CITY FARMING COMMONS

How can this be achieved in cities? For the commons to be powerful in a city where everything is large, it needs a broader coalition than it has in rural areas. In terms of skill level, the number of core members may not be that differ- ent from the practice in rural areas, but the amount of par- ticipants and observers3 should be much larger. Therefore, there is a serious problem with the quantity of vegetables. In addition to root vegetables that can only be grown in soil, those that can be grown hydroponically can be grown using the vertical farming method, making it possible to grow enough vegetables for about 120,000 meals4.

OPEN TECHNOLOGY AND SMALL CIRCULATION

Agriculture is becoming a very high-tech industry today5. Vertical farming is one of the best examples. Temperature, water composition, and genetics are completely regulated by artificial intelligence. The harvesting and maintenance is largely mechanized, and humans watch it on iPads. In this project, it is necessary to diagnose and anatomize vertical farming, rather than operating it as such a manipulative and closed technology, and to recombine it into a more open technology for conviviality6. It is not just a matter of making high-tech low-tech; it is a matter of reconfigur- ing technology so that it can be maintained and managed without the politics and power of control and manipula- tion that separate us from the plants. The agricultural pipes used in plastic greenhouses should be used as a framework, and the components should be as simple as possible. The growing environment should not be controlled discretely by microcomputers on a unit-by-unit basis, but rather by conventional air conditioning technology and circulation throughout the building. The technology is a key in the whole system, in which the water from the spring becomes the circulating water for the water-cooled heat pump chiller, which gradually returns to the same temperature as the environment within the building, and then returns to the environment through transpiration by the plants.

DEPARTMENT STORE REVOLVES, FAÇADE REVOLVES

When a department store is weighted according to the com- mercial value of its homogeneous structure, the spectacular intersections and avenues become the front, and the rest the back. Instead, the next generation of department stores will look to the abundant resources around them – in this case, gardening skills, water, sun, and wind – and bring the place of production back to your neighborhood. In this way, the sunny south of the building will be penetrated by the di- mension of plants, creating a new façade where production and circulation can be seen.