As a once archetypal household element, the stove has gradually become invisible in contemporary housing, with open-flame cooking disappearing into glasstop IH stoves and heating being concealed in the floors. Simultaneously the energy supply system has grown into an extensive and cohesive global network, at once distant and thus invisible to its end users yet heavily transforming the hinterland. Until the end of the nineteenth century the network was tangible and concrete: firewood was acquired from the forest, purchased by each household and used for the stove, and afterward the ash produced was re-collected by ash-traders for other uses such as sake brewing. From around 1960 Japan increasingly imported liquefied natural gas via tanker ships as an alternative energy supply, requiring a complicated gas-supply infrastructure, along with urban renewal, including shipyards, pipelines, gasometers, etc. Today the power system is a hybrid one, fed from multiple resources, including atomic power and renewable energy, making the network evermore extensive and abstruse.
Ryoku-Do Tower
The qualities of the site is the view on passing trains with close access to the station, also it is between the old little house and the backside of a big shopping mall.
The project explores the concept of an ur- ban capsule hotel, where the rooms are only for sleeping and relaxing, while the main ac- tivites happens outside of the capsule – in the common spaces like terraces as well as in the corridors and of course the lively area of Jiyu- gaoka. The room unit explores the idea of the “capsule thrown to the city”.
Vos
House Atrium / Atelier Bow- Wow
Lieb House
We drew two perspectives. One of these reveals the surroundings: just as the original beach location of the Lieb House brought home the project’s tenuous position on the sand, our perspective attempts to convey our project’s relationship to the urban environment. This strategy allows the viewer to understand the proportions of the urban fabric. Our other perspective focuses on the house, and reveals the deep opening into its facade. This design decision architecturally juxtaposes the neighboring house’s garage entrance, and initiates a conversation between our proposal and the rhythms of the site. Furthermore, these perspectives incorporate the new order imposed by our site on the Lieb House, and how we interpreted this architecturally.
The Lieb House features a stair that cut through it, linking the beach directly with the living space above. Bedrooms and bathrooms cluster around a central hall on the first floor. The architect points to this contrast between the two levels by painting the facade in two colors. Even so, the paint line doesn’t line up with the floor plate, but just bifurcates the facade. In our proposal we drew from these ideas and decide to incorporate a similar open space above with an urban garden terrace, then rearrange the bottom floor to allow for parking and small garden. This creates a link with the neighbors to form a shared semi-private outdoor space.
