Our house is difficult to explain in terms of a single clear idea, just like the Vanna Venturi House in Chestnut Hill, PA. Since the original site is wooded, while our project is situated in a dense urban area, we tried to adapt the plan to this new situation, In order to follow the pattern of the traditional Japanese machiya, we established the short side of the building as its main facade. But the entrance still maintains the character of Venturi’s mother’s house, in terms of its circulation, with the staircase and most of the doors close to the entrance.
Hersey House
Reading Hersey House-an unbuilt project by Robert Venturi for a beach house with no particular plot-we be came fascinated by the way this small house pretends to be bigger with its thin extended roof, hiding its smallness behind a projecting porch with a big cutout circle. In our project inspired by Hersey House, we aimed to keep and reinterpret the thin roof, making it almost as big as possible, but shifting it from its central position, in order to create different spaces underneath.
We kept the clearly defined orientation of the house, designing its entrance on the opposite side to the general approach, in a way similar to Hersey House.
Looking at the plan, all rooms are set to one side, leaving room for one big open space, but unlike in Hersey house, we decided to continue this openness into the second floor, creating a loft-like space.
We reinterpreted the porch or second skin, as we like to call it, by a wooden mesh-like construction with a cantilever behind, in order to create a parking space necessary in Tokyo’s urban context and also in order to provide a somewhat playful reference to House in Uehara house by Kazuo Shinohara, situated just a few doors away.
Lastly, we decided to keep the stilts of Hersey House and adjust them to our sloping terrain, because we thought of them as characteristic of Hersey’s image. Moreover, put ting the house up on legs gives a certain hint about its origin, suggesting that it came from somewhere else.
Download the Full Book
THE REPAIRER PRODUCTION
Focusing on the behavior of maintainers in Ike- bukuro, this project aims to propose an alternative way to the maintenance free system and relying on repair services. Here, maintenance skills can be trans- mitted, acquired and practiced. People in Ikebukuro can bring their unwanted items from the city and re- cycle them into the things needed to run the building. When things used in this building break down, they can be brought here again for maintenance. The pic- ture (Image 3) shows the cycle of goods throughout the Marui Building from the aspect of maintenance.
The design process went through the following pro- cess. First, we observed the behavior of “MAINTAIN- ERs” in Ikebukuro and analyzed the tools, the sur- rounding environment, clothing, and how they relate to the object of maintenance. As a result, we were able to find a connection between each maintenance be- havior by focusing on the “gloves” they wore.
Secondly, we categorized each maintenance behavior by the “gloves” people use, and efficiently arranged tools, sinks and desks suitable for each behavior.
Finally, by connecting the zones divided by the types of “gloves” with desks, rivers, and hanging shelves, we designed a mixture that would create a transmis- sion of skills.
Affection towards building and cities depends on whether they can be SELF MAINTAINED. Therefore, by creating this floor, we are able to develop a stronger attraction to the MARUI Building and Ikebukuro.
Partition
The history of the exterior partition-wall in the Japanese house seems to run in an opposite direction to the modern European one: from a succession of spatially differentiated thresholds to an overall technical ensemble. In the pre-modern period the building envelope was defined by its rich depth, which often embraced the entire house and its garden, forming a multi-layered and porous interaction between outside and inside. The enclosure of the post-war Japanese house, on the other hand, is reduced to a solid wall assembled out of mass-produced elements, leading to the collapse of the spatial multi-layeredness and its replacement by several functionally clearly delimited elements, namely the compact wall and its various openings, such as sash windows, air-conditioners, steam outlets, etc. In recent condominiums the wall has become defined by its increasing technological dependence, with a double, often contradictory goal: an ideal tightness of the enclosure and a series of highly controlled openings, gradually cutting off the inhabitants from their natural outside environment while creating a highly artificial one on the inside.