The “Umbrella House” for Swallow is an elegant structure with white floating roof standing on the green park, just beside the thick gray concrete wall of Bldg. 6, which form an unexpected harmony. The idea is introduced from the ecology of swallow and the character of its habitat. Though, instead of a thick wall on which we could provide the swallow their nest, we chose the very delicate material of umbrella. It’s not only about the idea of recycling but from the studying its skeleton and organization we could get much information and relationship with this material and our target. We tried to combine them in a way that they could form a perfect geometry to hold each other as well as to create enough space and shade for swallows to build their nest.
Student: Xueqi Wu
Along The Road
The assignment is to design a “palazzo” for Tokyo in Sasazuka. The site is characterized by a large elevated expressway right in front of the building. Our design reacts to the difficult site condition by positioning a mix of functions on different levels, corresponding to the quality of that level, or lack thereof. Public, commercial spaces can be found on the ground floor, while parking space is positioned at the level of the expressway, finally, the levels above the expressway, which have the highest spatial quality, are reserved for apartments with a view.