Frug House

Both the Frog House and the Gae House played important roles in shaping our design. Generally speking, these two projects can be respectively described as either a chimney with two facades or else a building with a big roof.

The main concept from the Frug House is its ambiguity, with its two facades, or faces. One on these is symmetrical and open, with large “eyes”, and the other is dug-in and shows the complex interior of the house with its various shapes and materials. Both these faces are emphasized in our perspectives. The chimney is kept because of its important position in the Frug House as well as for the design limitations and possibilities it creates. Our idea of a big roof is connected with Bow-Wow’s Gae House. Here, the roof pitch was determined by local regulations in this mostly residential area. The large-size front window makes the house more difficult to “perceive”, and this idea can be traced in both the Frug House and the Gae House.

The foursquare plan derives from the traditional Japanese “ta” character for the shape of a rice field; it consists of a simple division of the square-shaped plan into four equal quadrants. Both staircase and chimney are set in the same quadrant, forcing the stairs to dance round the chimney on the way up or down.

In our pespectives we reveal the ambiguity of our design. The symmetrical facade with its large window and hat-like roof that imitates a typical house shape dominates the first one. The second shows the playful asymmetrical backside.

Super Market

Supermarkets supply us with large amounts of food. Along with that, supermarkets use a lot of plastic. However, the disposal of plastic is considered the responsibility of the consumer. To reduce the consumption of plastic more effectively, we need to change the way we sell the product itself. The food sales floor has changed dramatically with the changing times. The division of labor has increased, and the distance between customers and shoppers has grown further and further apart. Once again, we must find a way to shorten the distance that has separated us and at the same time reduce waste and increase communication.

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.

Childcare / YIMBY

Low wages, long working hours, and an increasing burden due to the excessive demands of parents cause a shortage of childcare workers. There is also the NIMBY problem, where residents’ opposition to the construction of childcare facilities has forced them into poor conditions, such as under elevated railway tracks. All of these problems are caused by the fact that childcare is regarded as someone else’s business. A binary pits child welfare against economic activity and living conditions and excludes it. We tear away the asphalt that is paved by egoism. The soil opens up childcare, which used to be on the “other side” of the wall, to the city through activities such as composting, fieldwork and, children’s play in the soil.

TATAMI BEACH

ENCLAVE

Architect and educator – Pier Vittorio Aureli describes the political and architectural ideology in landscape and forms of urban economy in his book The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture. Aureli investigates to what extent some architecture could classify as some kind of methodology, visualizing architectures as archipelagos to conceptually categorize the formality of an architecture. The architecture of the archipelago must be an absolute architecture, as it is clearly subdivided in the city, in other words an “enclave” determined by the unbalanced economic exploitation. In contray, an ambiguity in space is explored in Arata Isozaki’s concept of “Ma (間)”, in his curated arts and architectural exhibition of MA: Space-Time in Japan Exhibition in 1979. Isozaki defies the Western logic of isolation of space and time, and fundamentally points out the significant sense of homogeneity in things. That being said, he pictures architecture as an event, or a phenomenon that encompasses historical context and interactions of time in between the spaces.

In 2021, the iconic department store closed in the midst of busy traffic, which was Marui (OIOI) at the west exit of Ikebukuro station. Ikebukuro was originally known for the black market (闇市) where the illegally installed street vendors were the artery of residents after the World War II, yet most of them are demolished and transformed into massive department store buildings today.

Although OIOI once became everyone’s shopping hub in Ikebukuro, unfortunately the demand for department stores had decreased due to the flow of time and changes of people’s need, eventually causing its market to corrupt. However, perhaps the critical issue in demolition of OIOI also comes from a lack of an “utopia” space for visitors to behave freely and flexibly through a human scale perspective. In fact, many of the department stores in Japan restrict human behaviors which possibly might have happened, except walking to shop. In order to regain the sense of Japan- ness in OIOI, the concept of “Ma”, which is strictly tighten up to the tradition of Japanese architecture, should be reinterpreted. The traditional sensibility of Japanese architecture has noticeable differences from Western architecture. Linguistically, Japanese language tends to be more dependent on what is proactive than Western languages, representing a high context of dependence of “Ba (場)”. Based on the concept of “Ma” and its formalistic structure, we intend to unravel what the architecturally ambiguous boundaries represent and what enhances the Japan-ness in the tatami beach. Arata Isozaki once claimed the significance of “Ma” is the meaning of the interval that naturally exists between things which exist in the phenomena continuously.

DESIGN PROPOSAL

The tatami beach does not necessarily refer to the ocean beach as mimicking the form. The homogenic space generated by the endless repetition of Tatami, a swaying and ambiguous light glows the materials, all come into a behavior of creating such a relaxing and pleasant atmosphere to feel the sense of continuous seashore. Repetition sometimes encloses in-between spaces, as Aureli articulates the formality of the thing – in this case the tatami mats, is the homogeneous repetition to generate the uniformity. As Jacques Derrida proposes ”différance as temporization, différance as spacing”, the imaginary boundary created by the relationship between continuity of tatami and the ceiling patterns, are the ambiguity of space which ultimately is equivalent to the concept of “Ma”.

Tatami patterns: The formation of the tatami floors remains its randomness scattered over the eighth floor of the building, despite the various combinations of tatami patterns being precisely calculated to induce certain human behaviors. Yojohan (四畳半), four tatami mats surrounding a small space with a sunken Kotatsu where the tatami is detachable, introduces behaviors of sitting, eating, reading, napping, relaxing, and playing games. As the numbers of tatami mat grow to Hachijo (八畳), and Sanju-nijo (三十二畳), the scale of human behaviors increases as well. Individuals start to scatter to seek for smaller “Ma” for coziness, and groups find bigger “ma” to hold a banquet, class, and such social activities. All behaviors are inherited by people across time and space through Japan-ness of “Ma” as if they had unconsciously remembered how to spend time on the tatami. Isozaki explains this phenomenon as symbolic space, along with Emmanuel Levinas states “the sign represents the present in its absence”.

Entrance shoeboxes: A raised platform is a sacred space with an imaginary boundary to make a distinction to the ground level in Japanese traditional architecture. Although the behavior of taking off pairs of shoes is common to be observed in temples to practice and pray, it is consciously done in the inhabitable spaces in Japan.

The garden: The most ambiguous space where people sit at the edge of tatami to observe the garden, and the actual city scape of Ikebukuro in the background of the arches. It blends the outside real world with the inside “utopia”. However, there is no clear boundary between the inside and outside, and the ambiguity of these scenery creates a conceptual Japan-ness.