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Golden Prize |
| Ben Addy (UK) |
| Category A Japanese
Style |
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Design Report
The proposal seeks to address not only the epidemic sprawl
of Japan's urban fabric [and the corresponding environmental
pressures] but also the endemic digitalization of the
Japanese metacity. While the physical City of history
was once constructed around the 'Gate' and the 'Port',
the telephysical metacity is now reconstructed around
the 'Tele-Port' and the 'Window'; around the screen and
the time slot. The physical horizon has been augmented
by the square and utterly thin horizon of the digital
screen. question.
The Tokyo Cornubation is the world's largest metropolitan
area and yet, aside from the Downtown area, is paradoxically
both chaotic in physicallity and sterile in character.
Due to the high land prices and strict zoning laws,
residential districts are located hours away from the
workplace. This marginalises the home and as a result
marginalises family life.
To counter this, the proposal is a lightweight and
reproducible pattern that can be adopted in a number
of situations, from an opportunistic siting in a disused
downtown car lot, to a more conventional stacked arrangement
on a more substancial gap site. The intention being,
in both instances, to exploit the self contained and
prefabricated nature of the House in order to site it
closer to working areas. Relative energy self-sufficency
is a requirement for such a House but it is also an
ecological imperative, given the rapid expansion of
our Urban areas. By utilizing the actual building fabric
itself, the skin and the shell form, the importing of
energy into the house to provide artificial heating,
cooling and lighting is minimized. Each House is a power
station in its own right.
Both conceptually and diagrammatically the House is
the combination of two discrete components. Living areas
within an open and reconfigurable Shell Form are held
aloft by a stackable mass concrete Service Core. The
kitchen and dining area joins the two volumes. As the
function, which embodies the most overlap in terms of
occupancy and duration between the three members of
the family, this is the principle shared space of the
House. Regardless of the configuration of other spaces
within the Shell Form, this mutual 'cultural plaza'
is the programmatic centre of gravity for the house
Utilising a series of diaphanous layers akin to Shoji
screens, the interior of the shell form can be manipulated
by the occupant family to incorporate a number of functions
and provide a number of discrete spaces. Corresponding
to predetermined factory layouts, housed within the
Shell Form are low wattage LED projectors. Taking the
place of conventional screens and providing all the
information access for the occupants, imagery and data
is projected onto the surface of the screens. exchange.
More substantial boundaries between spaces can be created
by overlaying a number of screens; providing environmental,
acoustic and visual separation. When projections ore
cast onto these 'layered' surfaces, the infra-thin surface
of the projected image is given an apparent volumetric
depth in space. This staccato overlapping of imagery
becomes the defining visual barrier between spaces.
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| Comments by juries |
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Mendini: Simply put, from this work I get the
impression of an airport. It is novel in that the modules all
connect with one another to develop into another project. It's
very much architectural, and the effective use of both straight
and curved lines proves an outstanding selection of high-tech
materials. It also made a varied use of space. In cultural context,
the work delivers elements of Japanese culture. In general,
I believe that great works allow us to look at architecture
in a new light in form through a selection of materials.
Zhang: This work is future-oriented and novel.
Using metal and glass materials, the designer made small modules
which combined and expanded into an architectural structure.
This method enables us to build a superior building in structure
and capability. It also produces both small and large spaces
as needed through various ways. With its free use of space,
the design allows the residents to seek convenience of their
own to the full in both time and space. It can help create space
most suitable to the life of modern people. In terms of the
composition of the materials, the work has a design highly suited
to the mechanized, modern life. Its advantage lies in the easy
rearrangement of space with its direction and opening/shutting
adjustable to the will of the residents. As we face problems
of the future when energy is in danger of depletion, the design
proposes the direction for us to take in answer to the question
of how we should be able to solve those energy problems through
solar energy and wind power. The design reminds me of the automation
facility at a conference room of the Bundestag, or Parliament,
in Berlin, Germany. That's why I think this design is suitable
for the paradigms of environmental protection and sustainable
development. To talk about the appearance, the rhythmic combination
of illuminations and curved lines gives notice of the trend
of the modern design. It leaves something to be desired as it
failed to propose a specific approach toward how interior can
be used in real life. However, the jurors held the work in high
estimation as it was a novel and cutting-edge design.
Kim: While possessing the world's top-notch
technology in the automobile and shipbuilding industries, Japan
has built houses of new styles mostly in the traditional manner.
In this regard, I think the designer proposed what he thinks
as housing of industrial production. I suppose that he made
the proposal of the housing form in an industrial cluster, a
form that he might have wished that Japan would implement. When
Frank Lloyd Wright built Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, by replacing
the traditional Japanese architectural material with reinforced
concrete he created a new, epoch-making work, or a work that
went beyond East and West to use our term. I thought this winning
entry can be another, small Imperial Hotel in that it hinted
at the possibility of building a structure as if to manufacture
automobiles, with the technology that the industrial power of
modern Japan has achieved. This work reminds us of the fact
that what we call things Japanese, Korean, or Chinese are not
just captured in aesthetical or emotional terms, but they can
also be grasped by finding a national identity from the reality
in which the country finds itself and the potential and problems
that the country has. Therefore, if developing a new housing
form based on the technological and economic prowess that Japan
has achieved can be deemed a Japanese style, then this work
began with the potential of Japan, pursuing to break through
the problems it faces today. This entry is a proposal that has
never existed in the first and second competitions in that it
exhibited how an architectural plan can be a structure, which,
in turn, can be an industrial production.
Sejima: Though not in the traditional Japanese
style, I find that the work still can be a Japanese style in
the way that it may be constructed as well as in psychological
aspects. |
