PILGRIMS HOSTEL
The design proposal is on the site next to the shrine – connected on the same level, and with plenty of vegetation. We search about the activities of pilgrims, and offer a timeline of activities: the basic ones (sleeping, bath- ing), and some that connect with the spiritual experience (dining, workshops, tea ceremony, meditation/worship). The process started with dispersing the activities on the site to create the design, and connect them in two areas public and private, linked with the semi-public outdoor space.
The sequences were part of the pilgrimage narrative – spiritual journey within the site. From arriving, along the long ramp corridor, to come to the point which is opposite of the public entrance to the temple. And climbing few steps, to reach a garden semi-private, disconnected from the street with the terrace from the hostel. The garden offers three paths – meditation room under ground, with a sky opening that views the shrine. Continuing to the terrace and the reception of the hostel, or continuing to the shrine. After the reception, few steps are climbed to provide accommo- dating space on the same level as the shrine.
Lieb House
We drew two perspectives. One of these reveals the surroundings: just as the original beach location of the Lieb House brought home the project’s tenuous position on the sand, our perspective attempts to convey our project’s relationship to the urban environment. This strategy allows the viewer to understand the proportions of the urban fabric. Our other perspective focuses on the house, and reveals the deep opening into its facade. This design decision architecturally juxtaposes the neighboring house’s garage entrance, and initiates a conversation between our proposal and the rhythms of the site. Furthermore, these perspectives incorporate the new order imposed by our site on the Lieb House, and how we interpreted this architecturally.
The Lieb House features a stair that cut through it, linking the beach directly with the living space above. Bedrooms and bathrooms cluster around a central hall on the first floor. The architect points to this contrast between the two levels by painting the facade in two colors. Even so, the paint line doesn’t line up with the floor plate, but just bifurcates the facade. In our proposal we drew from these ideas and decide to incorporate a similar open space above with an urban garden terrace, then rearrange the bottom floor to allow for parking and small garden. This creates a link with the neighbors to form a shared semi-private outdoor space.
Stay In The Sky Stay in The Sky
The area in front of Jiyugaoka station North exit is exposed to intensive flows of people as well as various things and events in the town. From early morning to midnight, scenes change constantly through local people’s ac- tivities, the tides of 160,000 commuters and visitors a day, car and train fluxes, and the operations of shops and offices, all of which punctuate the apparently chaotic scenes into unique rhythms of the town like slow breath- ing.
Now almost buried among recent high-rise buildings, five two-storey shops facing the sta- tion square still remain as the face of the town, and one would notice the shops share an un- even yet similar-height roofline. Once noticed, the contrast between new high-rises and the surviving low-rises looks like a reminder of old Jiyugaoka back in the rapidly fading past.
Our accommodation project “YOUR PRIVATE SKY” redefines the now-hidden roofline into an open space for the shop customers and lo- cal and visiting rooftop lovers, while providing special access to sky and townscape only with the guests.
Toilet
The development of the toilet and the treatment of excrement in Japan are closely linked to a growing mechanization of the lavatory as a device and its progressive shift vis-à-vis the house from outdoors to indoors. In the Edo and early Meji Periods toilets were located at the edge of or outside the house. Conceived as a squat-latrine system, made out of wood, it was adapted for the easy collection of the excrement, which was then used as fertilizer. Between the World Wars, new systems, new materials, and even new toilets (for instance toilet bowls) were slowly introduced, while the collection of sewage became more and more mechanized, with basket collection being successively replaced by trucks, then mobile vacuum-extraction units, and later still by a Western type of sewage system with pipes. In recent years the predominant European-based device has become hyper-Japanized, highly automated (including washing, drying, background noise, cleaning, disinfecting, etc.), and even described and praised as something kawaii (cute, adorable) in the public narrative.
Baladin
House in Uehara / Kazuo SHINOHARA