Living and Working in Tokyo
Living and Working in Tokyo is an international architecture student competition organised by ARCHsharing.
In this context, ARCHsharing invites participants to work on a small scale project in Omotesando district, where businesses came to interact with the existing residential structure. The plot with modest dimensions will host a mixed program linking home and workspace areas.
The proposal will take into account the cyclical renewal of Japanese buildings. A sustainable architecture that adapts easily or renews to the rhythm of generations and environmental factors will be appreciated.
AN OPEN HOUSE-The project consists of a stack of thin blades spaced 45 cm apart, ie 90 cm/2, the founding dimension of Japanese spatiality.This micro dimension, by superposition was our first tool in order to propose a combination of uses adapted to a small parcel and geometric approaches.
The surface of each blade was divided by 4 while shifting and rotating at 90 °. Thus an outline is drawn up whose path is sequenced by the various domestic uses.
Workspaces, community living spaces and private spaces are delimited by the notion of threshold alone, while being connected by the notion of continuity. The boundaries between uses are dissolved but distinct at the same time.
The house was designed as a polymorphic, domestic and urban space.
Particular attention was paid to the interstitial continuity between the Tokyo constructions by a new connection between the street on the east side and the garden in the heart of the block leading to the Cat street. This transition passage between two urban spaces crosses the semi-buried working area in order to connect the two levels bordering the plot.
The external language of the geometric blades is palliated by a language of interiority designed by the curve. A central vacuum travels the house in its verticality and comes to cut the blades in the design of the floors.
A PROGRESSIVE ASCENCION-Our proposal will be perceived as a device of social interactions by programmatic superposition. The passage from one world to another is made by a gradual ascent towards the roof or by a slight descent towards the garden. In both cases, it was important to translate the fluidity of the path through the use of the curve.
Depending on the wishes of the users, the house can be totally open to public space. Transition devices between private uses disappear. The whole house becomes a public process and allows the exhibition of works presented by the 3 inhabitants. The building becomes a real showroom for artistic exhibitions. The workspace is transformed into a sales space, the kitchen becomes a coffee shop, and the rooms turn into workshop or exhibition spaces.
Thanks to simple but practical devices (modular furniture, assemblies and porosities), this polymorphous house is not a simple workshop house but a multifunctional space that juggles skillfully between uses through a playful and poetic universe.
