Tuesday, March 3, 2009

GLASS SHUTTER HOUSE - Tokyo, Japan, 2003

The site is located in a commercial area a little distance away from a busy shopping street by a train station. The area is mainly comprised of three-story commercial buildings where the ground floor storefront facade is the familiar scene of shutters that continue. Instead of newly inserting an unusual form or facade into the street fabric, I established a similar cubic volume and used the common vocabulary of the storefront shutter facade to adapt to the surrounding streetscape.
On the inside of the shutter, there is a three-story and two-story high curtain which is next in this layered composition. The relationship between interior space and exterior space is controlled by completely closing all shutters, or opening just the shutters on the side of the building, or opening just halfway, and further still, when adjusted in combination with the curtains, it becomes possible to create situations to adapt to any occasion. Architecture which supposedly does not change aspects, has, in this project, become an architecture which can adjust to varying seasons and occasions just as we change clothing accordingly.

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