DBEW International Design Competition

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Winners

Grand Prix	<1>
Golden Prize	<1> <2>
Silver Prize	<1> <2> <3> <4> <5> <6> <7> <8> <9> <10> <11> <12>

Golden Prize

Ben Addy (UK)

Category A Japanese Style

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.

Comments by juries

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.