The exhibition reminds us of what is missing on Instagram or any social media, like other senses besides visual prompts and stories of real people there. All of this combined allow us to have a wider experience in the Golden Gai district. During the presentation, the explanation about the core of the exhibition could be better expressed from this point. The importance of this research also relies on the fact that it identifies the shift in the main user of this neighborhood as well as its urban shifts along history. The portrait of people – owners or guests of the bar – who tell us their stories are quite significant for the exhibition. In a next step for this work, having this bigger than what was presented in the space would be useful. This work is also valuable in the sense of preservation and documentation of the place and acknowledge Ed Rusha and “Every Building on the sunset strip” as a viable model.
Partition
The history of the exterior partition-wall in the Japanese house seems to run in an opposite direction to the modern European one: from a succession of spatially differentiated thresholds to an overall technical ensemble. In the pre-modern period the building envelope was defined by its rich depth, which often embraced the entire house and its garden, forming a multi-layered and porous interaction between outside and inside. The enclosure of the post-war Japanese house, on the other hand, is reduced to a solid wall assembled out of mass-produced elements, leading to the collapse of the spatial multi-layeredness and its replacement by several functionally clearly delimited elements, namely the compact wall and its various openings, such as sash windows, air-conditioners, steam outlets, etc. In recent condominiums the wall has become defined by its increasing technological dependence, with a double, often contradictory goal: an ideal tightness of the enclosure and a series of highly controlled openings, gradually cutting off the inhabitants from their natural outside environment while creating a highly artificial one on the inside.
Aoyama Hills
The assignment is to design a “palazzo” for Tokyo in Aoyama. The site is located between the Aoyama Kitacho Danchi (low-density social housing area) and the Aoyama Dori, which provides a typical urban situation in Tokyo, with high-rises standing along the main commercial street forming a “wall”, protecting the low-rise housing area behind.
The concept of the project is to continue the urban fabric of “wall” and maintain the contrast of the two sides of the site by designing a palazzo with two very different sides, reacting respectively to the different urban situations. The different functions and spaces are organised around a central void. Facing the Aoyama Dori are mainly offices and other public functions, while facing the Danchi area are mainly apartments with a private terrace for each. The apartments take the form of terrace housing in order to adjust to the height difference between the two sides of the site, allowing more light into the spaces at the same time. A structure system of columns and slabs is chosen so that there is more flexibility in accommodating spaces with different dimensions for various functions.
House in Vail
The House in Vail, CO, is proof that complexity and contradiction lead to ambiguity and richness of meaning. It consists of two different sorts of verticality: one articulated via the site context, the other contained by a sheer surface. North and south elevations are totally different, and the perception of the house from outside and inside is likewise contradictory. The scale of the roof and façade elements contributes to perceptual ambiguity- the real height is never directly revealed. Inside, depending on the height at which the observer is positioned, the house is perceived as either a tower or a small studio. By playing on this characteristic, while keeping the Tokyo context in mind, our new proposal suggests a building, divided into two parts, with mixed functions linked by an out of scale stair and a bridge that also inflates the perceived scale.
From the road, the entry is ambiguous, for there is no door in the main façade. Instead, it is located at the back. On the front left-hand side, a big stair emerges and continues along the whole site, as well as inside the building. It is the connection between the single parts of the house and its more unified surface that make it a whole. The outside is a semi-public space. Also, the way in which each external part is expressed separately does not encourage any visual connection with what is going on inside.
The difference between the House in Vail and our de sign lies in the act of traversal. In the former, the occupant or visitor must decide whether to take the stairs or the bridge. The new design proposes an architectural promenade, using both these elements as a continuous passage though the site. Robert Venturi’s so-called inclusive design method has promoted our understanding of the design and its articulation.
Sink
While the shape and function of the sink has remained largely similar throughout its modernization, as a network it has greatly changed through time, perhaps most tangibly expressed in the reduction of the visibility of water in Japanese daily life. Even though water-supply systems were introduced within cities in the Edo Period, daily water management still entailed close human interactions: guarding the water source, lifting water from the well, common laundry activities, etc. Although the widespread introduction of underground water-piping systems and pumps after World War Two enabled the direct delivery of water to individual apartments, wastewater still remained open and thus visible. Further improvements in the closing decades of the twentieth century, in the form of pressure pumps, facilitated universal direct supply, even to multistory buildings. At the same time, grey water and black water are now systematically transported to treatment plants through a sewage system, hidden from sight, before being fed back into rivers or the sea.