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.
Yoyogi / Start Up Station
Standing with its platform parallel to the road, Yoyogi station is a hidden building with few parts exposed to the city. At the west exit, the building facade that faces the intersection is in line with other buildings. Passing through this exit, the stairs divide to cross the Central line, Sobu line and the Yamanote line, and reach the small east entrance. The station has unique characteristics such as the staircase rising towards the platform, or the west exit orientation that is adjusted to the city blocks. Distinctive steps were taken to coordinate the various cir- cumstances in the station building.
Yoyogi flourished due to young people as various academic facilities of preparatory and animation schools were established in this area. However, as Japan is facing a declining birth- rate, the state of the city is starting to change. In the future, the ticket gates may change into gateless or touchless which then create a wider space inside the station. In these circumstan- ces, what would the station look like if the station planned to provide an incubation office for creative individuals who dreamt of entrepreneurship and startups?
An atrium was created by removing the wall on the first floor of the West exit station building and the floor of the second-floor courtyard. The third floor was raised and the boundary with the platform was removed. This way, the existing platform, 2nd and 3rd floor became steps that shifted half a floor. As these various steps of courtyards, floors, and platform with new stairs connect, variations of visual permeability within the station building are created. Resi- dents will work mainly in the spaces on the 2nd and 3rd floors. With this new station, they will be able to freely publicize themselves to the station users and be able to interact with each other.
Tabata / Book Station
There were many writers living around Tabata station. Bunshi village, where creative activi-ties were developed through intense competition, is now a residential area on a highland spreading beyond a small south entrance. On the other hand, the north entrance is crowded with various residents in a space covered with a sloping roof, which resembles the Western terminal station. Because of the form type of the station, which stands above the platform and also due to the crossing of the Yamanote line and the Keihin Tohoku line, the scale of the roof is extremely huge.Though the spread of e-books is becoming intense, books as physical objects will never disappear. Rather in recent years, the experience of reading books has been given a new role by fusing bookstores with cafes and hotels. If the station becomes a landmark of the area and explores the idea of becoming a base for new exchanges based on the culture and experience of the book, how would Tabata station would look like? A library with book shelves is arranged symmetrically along the structure of the large roof. In accordance with the escalator position from the two platforms, a escalator connecting to the second floor is made, inviting people to enter a space full of bookshelves beneath a void that symbolizes the “Book Station”. The bookshelf from the catwalk on the side of the slope roof is expanded and spread towards the places such as bakery and souvenir shop. Ever- ything is managed with tags and everybody can lend and borrow the books from anywhere. The theme is that of the book that gathers changes whenever someone uses it. On the back of a tall bookshelf, in order to continue the culture of creating books, facilities such as writing class along with editorial and publishing facilities help users to engage in these interests.
ETHNIC FOOD KITHEN
PROLOGUE
In Ikebukuro, a city with many foreign workers, there are many ethnic restaurants. In ethnic restaurants, peo- ple recall a certain “place” through food. It can be said that ethnic cuisine has an aspect of transmitting “place” that goes beyond food. Therefore, I propose an ethnic kitchen to explore food as a commons.
DECONSTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF ETHNIC CUISINE
There are various types of ethnic cuisines. In recent years, with the development of social networking sites, “authenticity” is becoming more and more important in ethnic cuisine. However, the actual cuisine is defined by the ingredients and the cooking method, and there is a limit to the cooking method. Therefore, when we deconstructed the cooking process, we found that the heating process is the most important one. Therefore,
We decided to classify the world’s cuisines not by coun- try or region, but by heating method. Just as fire has created gatherings of people since ancient times, we hope that fire will create new communities of people in this project. In addition, we believe that the food pre- pared there will eventually be influenced by the cuisines of other countries and become international cuisine. Regarding the recent boom in international cuisine, ac- cording to (1), it can be said that it is a trend of ideo- logical support to break away from the illusory recogni- tion of nationalities. However, statelessness, which can be reached only at the end of the transmission of the identity of all people as an ethnic group, is very differ- ent from a society in which the identity of nationality is suppressed, even if it is the same in the sense that it is not bound to a single nationality, and it would be an attractive society.
CONSTRUCTING THE KITCHEN AS A SINGLE WORLD
Reconstructing the world’s cuisine in terms of process- es rather than actual geographical criteria is equivalent to creating a semantic world or city. In this project, the only thing that was decided was that one unit would be created for each heating place, but I could not find any basis for the decision beyond that. Therefore, the archi- pelago model was used in this project as the basis for the architectural decision, because the existing pillar grid was a factor, precisely because it was a renovation of a department store, and the places where people stay avoided the area around the pillars, and the space sur- rounded by pillars became one unit. However, more than such a rationale, the image of the world map held by ethnic cuisine led to the model of Archipelago.
Arata Isozaki is one of the architects who confronted the problem of the absence of a determinant basis for design. He began using the term “tentative form” after a conversation with Ignazi Sola-Morales in 1990, hav- ing developed it from his methodological theory in the 1970s. It is very interesting to note that he also used the
archipelago model in his Tentative Form, in which a one-time form was chosen depending on the situation at hand. In this project, the archipelagoes are connected by an infrastructure of water and fire (smoke), so it can be said that the method of generation is just like the city itself. Not only in this project, but also in architectur- al design, the criterion of judgment is always tentative, and therefore, the citation of the city as a tentative im- age in architectural design has been done since modern times. Therefore, the citation of the city as a tense im- age in architectural design has been done since modern times. As a sign of this, we can see many urban theories by architects as concept making.
ETHNIC FOOD KITCHEN
Returning to the description of the project, the place created by the counter and ducts is repeated, changing its form for each type of heating. At this point, there is a danger of uniformity in design and experience. In such a situation, Aureli describes the concept of enclave, re- ferring to the non-stop city. enclave is a means to break away from the uniformity of the space, and it also shares the same concept of landmarking. In this proj- ect, the decision was made to place the fire place on the periphery, with the exhaust ducts outside, and the more public units in the center. Here, by arranging the kitch- en as an enclave in addition to the tables, redundancy is ensured even within the grid arrangement. Through ethnic cuisine, the exploration of the rationale for de- sign in architecture is considered to be the outcome of this project.
DESIGN PURPOSE
Ethnic cuisines from around the world were catego- rized by heating method, and each cooking area was ar- ranged and designed. In addition, since the energy used for heating determines whether or not it can be reused, the color of the piping was changed for each type of en- ergy to create a space where the variations of the world’s cuisine can be visually recognized.
Farmstay In The City
AGRICULTURE & ACCOMODATION
INTERNATIONAL CITY, NEIGHBOURHOOD AND PRIVATE SCALE OF USE.
In this project we tried to re-incorpsed agrar- ian past of jiyugaoka into a smaller scale, In order to maintain this strong identity related to activities that habited the area from the begin- ing first through fields and farming and later through an important greenhouse activity.
To make such activities work economicaly and materially it would have to be opened to a certain amount of public, serving the global scale with accomodations, and the neighbour- hood with facilities open to local living people through a membership with an association.
This project has been conducted during the workshop held in collaboration by Tsukamo- to Yoshiharu and Andrea Matin. After the last correction, the group wished to develop fur- ther after the professors critics.