Ginza Rocks

The assignment is to design a “Palazzo” for Tokyo in Ginza. The site is located an intersection of Chuo Dori and a typically narrow Old Ginza backstreet.
Our Ginza Palazzo is a building that reinforces the urban qualities of Ginza. It tries to bring more public space and innovation in this very commercial and increasingly homogenous area.
The idea of our Palazzo is to bring a space that can evolve and host different types of program. The use of the Plan Libre permits to create large open spaces. Those ones are divided to create shops, organize to create offices and opened to create a residential community at the four top floors of the Palazzo. We wanted to create a great relations between the different levels and program and make them communicate.
Then, the rooftop made by a large cornice is accessible to the public and offers a special program in order to contemplate Ginza in a very special atmosphere.

Re-a-pier

Odaiba, as an artificial island, started with a lot of locked Res communis, such as the water, beaches, plants etc. However, Odaiba was almost abandoned after the Second World War. The access to the island and its resources were also extremely limited, so few people went to the Odaiba area during that period. Then, the government wanted to change Odaiba area into a commercial center, building Lex communis such as piers and waterfront promenades along the coastline to attract more people. Because of this Lex communis, a series of Praxis communis appeared such as photography. As such, the Odaiba waterfront reached the current ecology balance. However, the frequency and the variety of the Praxis communis is not sufficient since the Lex communis provided is not efficient and the Res communis cannot be fully unlocked. The proposal of our group is the redesign of the existing piers. We used the same structure systems and designed a series of piers with different topics to provide for various experiences for both local residents and tourists. And, more activities (Praxis communis) will happen along the waterfront by the enhanced Lex communis. As such, more Res communis will be unlocked. Consequently, the ecology after the proposal will become more lively and dynamic.

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.

Bat Balance

Balanced on a cherry tree at almost four meters heights, Bat House stands out in the open space near Building 3 in Midorigaoka Area and offers refuges for bats. The concept of balance is inspired by animals behavior and get along with the interplay of forces that characterize trees from roots to leaves. The new appendage is based on a singular repeated construction system that, working on other parameters, generates variation of parts. The joints have not only structural function but are also the matrix of the spaces that bats need.