ArchShowcase Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination. Open Architecture Project in Tokyo, Japan by Yoshiaki OyabuAugust 7th, 2011 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: Yoshiaki Oyabu We make use of leftover space between five buildings to provide an extension to the public realm. Our inspiration bases on uniquely Japanese notions of layered scale and externality like the Japanese traditional ‘hiroen’ . The modern hiroen changes character on the place and makes a new context of the town.
This project focuses on problems of spatial congestion in Japanese cities. Making use of the gaps between buildings offers a new solution to a perennial dilemma. In a congested residential part of Tokyo, we have inserted a lightweight, tiered walkway connected with the front road into the leftover space between five houses. Made from a steel frame and expanded metal mesh, which allows light to percolate through it, this narrow and layered space is conceived as an extension of the public realm. As a safe and enticing place to play, it is eagerly colonized by local children, but could also support different sorts of adult gatherings and festivities. We design a social environment in open-architecture project. Riffing on uniquely Japanese notions of layered scale and externality, our inspiration is the hiroen, a veranda-like structure often attached to Japanese traditional buildings that provides an extension of the internal space. This open-architecture project stacks it up and subverts it in response to a more pressurized modern context, but nonetheless, the principle of creating an‘edge’or fragment space that can be appropriated for different activities remains the same. And our notion of the modern hiroen could be applied to other similar situation. Contact Yoshiaki Oyabu
Category: Public Landscapes |