SHIKATEBUKURO APARTMENT
Principal-in-charge : Fujino Takashi
Project team : Morita Tatsuya
Consultants : Suzuki Akira／ASA Sugata Kenichiro
Sign : Maniackers Design Sato Masayuki Sato Mami
General Contractor : Hashizume Industrial Inc.
Design : 2011.9 - 2013.2
Construction : 2014.7
Structural system : reinforced concrete
Story : 3 stories
Total floor area : 751.34㎡
Program : Apartment
Selected Architectural Designs 2017
architecture & culture
LiVES 2014 OCT.& NOV. vol.77
新建築 2014年8月号 SHINKENCHIKU 2014.8
GA HOUSES 138
GA JAPAN 128
GA HOUSES 136 PROJECT 2014
WIDE Architecture Report 33
Architecture as a small town block.
Saitama city, Saitama, there is nostalgic square between the low rise apartments standing in a row line. Shikatebukuro district, where the calling voice of the grocery store or the tofu store echo around and the Japanese mansion with rich gate still remains. Children and elder people are walking slowly and the distance between local residents is favorable. I wanted to integrate this familiarity of local area into the apartment of 14 rooms.
I intended to design the closing opened architecture. I thought, as the extent of relief that the private space is protected, the people can extrovert your consciousness toward the outside. In this apartment, designing the terrace and the garden as the exclusive place for each room, I thought the residents are able to feel free to spend the time on the outside.
As the composition of building, narrow, long void divides the full volume of site horizontally and vertically. The void penetrates the building and go through to town street and neighbor’s green, therefore, even from deep in the concrete complex, residents can feel the sign of the neighborhood and the town. The 14 types of plan would apply into the subdivided volume as a grid form and the light and wind would be led into there.
It has been two years since completion of the apartment, in the lifestyle going and coming within and without the concrete mass and void, gradually, the resident’s belongings appear around there. The resident’s living style is seen on and off from the street, and beyond there, the town continues. I think, probably, what I designed is able to define as the small town block which people live in rather than as a single architecture.
