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.

D’Agostino House

This is a house with two entrances and a shortcut, situated between an iconic townhouse and a parking lot. Related solely to its neighbor and to Venturi’s large, unrealized D’Agostino House, we opened for a linear tripartite sequence – front garden, living space, and utilities – in which one moves from automotive urbanity to the innermost sanctuary of the human dwelling.
The garden hides behind a façade that nods to its neighbor and whose mere existence is a Venturian feature. You park the car and advance diagonally to the subtle front entrance.
The living space is a large cubic space. Its direction changes abruptly and dramatically breaks up the linearity of the scheme. One glides upward via a broad stair, into the light that flows down from the large windows above.
From here, one moves either up to a second floor bed room or down to the kitchen, from which you may also jpg B escape via a backdoor.

Through Palazzo

The Ebisu site has interesting points to concern in order to design a good Palazzo in this area. The road in front of the Ebisu site connects Shibuya; the most crowded and fashionable area in Tokyo, and Ebisu; calm and luxurious area, together. Moreover, the characteristics of the site are unique. It is long and narrow. It is also located along the Shibuya river.; the old river that has long history behind it.
With these interesting site conditions we discovered, our design approaches for the Palazzo in Ebisu are; to create relationship between users and pedestrians, and architecture together, and to create good environments for urban contexts (likes, public open spaces, gardens, etc. )

Elderly Care / Age is No Hinderance

In Jiyugaoka, a residential area is located at the top of the hill, and an elderly care facility and a school are located next to each other at the bottom. However, there is no interaction between these two facilities, and the elderly care facility is closed. Therefore, in order to allow children to enter the facility, a section of the building was manipulated and three plazas were created in plan. In this way, interaction between the elderly, school children, and local residents is created, and the elderly, who used to only receive care, are now actively involved.