LOVE ARCHITECTURE

Random Gated City
Most cities in Japan consist of roads and city blocks with private land and private buildings, where people cannot enter freely. Streets are supposed to have a public nature; however, using the inflexible government-owned roads as a core, random and private façades, which often expose private scenes on their surface, stand side by side on both sides of the road. From the private side, it is hard to have an excellent view from windows, and sometimes their privacy is even intruded upon. Adjustability of buildings as a boundary is not working for most buildings, and therefore causes such disagreements between public and private, as well as inactive lives. No active urban life can be expected. The site is in a city block 108m long between a highway, Inokashira Street, and a shopping street, Suehiro Street, and resembles a sandbank to block a river’s flow. In Syugoin, adjustment of the public-private relationship was attempted in two different dimensions: (1) a dynamic approach to activate the public and private by new boundaries, and (2) a static approach to being public.

Diversity of a Pass-through Passage/Facade as Public
The building was built with the upper limit of building coverage, 80%. Instead of using the remaining 20% as a common space, the area is open to the public as a pass-through passage to connect the north and south sides of the town which are separated by the long city block. By taking advantage of the site that is facing two streets, two entrances are made for the residences. Four blocks of residences are connected with only two staircases, in order to keep an open sky view. The pass-through passage is available for both the shops on the lower level and the residents on the upper levels. By spatially making the staircases and balconies in the pass-through passage area, which is freely available to the general public, an option to pass by or a dynamism for meeting with various people are simultaneously created, involving passersby, shop visitors, shop workers, people who leave or arrive at the residences, and residents who stay on the balcony.
A simple expression of particle density was attempted on the openings and walls of the residences, in order to overcome the differences in functions. For the south and north façades, openwork bricks and running bond bricks are used, respectively. As a result, the only indications that the passage goes through to the next street are the gaping holes in the privacy-protecting walls along the streets.

Extraction of Fluctuation from Chaos
Such exterior adjustments of relationships are also effective for interiors. Floor plans of individual households differ from each other. They are mostly spontaneously decided upon based on the location of the entrance hall, which depends on the continuous staircases, and the openings that do not face each other across the pass-through passage. Each household has two types of openings with different natures: one faces towards the street with openwork bricks and aluminum sashes, and another faces towards the pass-through passage with wooden sashes. The former shuts out the chaotic townscape, while allowing dot-shaped lights to go through, resembling comfortable fluctuating sunlight passing through leaves. By approaching the opening, the townscape can be seen, and by retreating from the opening, only light and shadow can be seen. Meanwhile, around the latter and beyond, plaster walls, discolored bricks, rough joints, plated metal handles and curtain pipes can be seen. All of them are used because they have comfortable fluctuation in the finished products, due to the production process or various errors in the process.

True publicity
As seen in random streetscapes, the individual private advantage sometimes becomes inhibited as a result of the aggregated private advantages. Although Syugoin is a private building, it was planned to maintain private comfort even when combined, while pursuing private comfort.
A building that organizes all relationships among residents, users, as well as passersby and cars, by manipulation of building boundaries, will be rooted in the town someday. When high quality individuals gather, true publicity will be born.