The site of this project is located in a commercial area in front of a railway station on the outskirts of the city center. This is a dense area lined with small shops. The site faces 4-meter wide streets to the west and north. This is a proposal for collective housing on a corner lot of narrow streets. For vocabulary specific to collective housing - balconies and dust-sweeping windows - to have meaning, there must first be sufficient vacant space (green area) in front. An apartment house built along a street must utilize the vacant space of the street frontage, but in the case of this site, the 4 meter street width is insufficient. If balconies and dust-sweeping windows are included in the design for a location with insufficient vacant land, the windows will have their curtains shut throughout the day, (thereby losing the function as windows), and the balconies will be used for nothing more than trash storage, (and thereby not function as balconies). On the first floor are shops and the second to fifth floors are the dwellings. From second floor upwards, the volume becomes one large sloping surface which results in a combination of vacant space and space above the road. The lower edge of the slope is 1.9 meters above ground level, just above the height of pedestrians and the enormous sloping surface extends into the sky. The street facades of the shops on first floor are set back 1.2 meters in order to provide a sidewalk. The entire sloping surface on the street side was designed as double-sliding ribbon windows, without balconies or dust-sweeping windows. According to the frame locations, the sliding panels are made of different materials (clear glass, etched glass, aluminum panels, aluminum mesh), and are used for lighting, ventilation, clothes drying, and mechanical service access hatches. This sequence of tightly-aligned panels - with the same dimensions but different materials - becomes an alternative configuration for collective housing. Four shops and thirteen apartments are contained in one volume. The dwelling units have a ceiling height of 3.5 meters and an effective spacing of 4.2 meters, and their service cores are in the same location on each floor. The depth of the dwelling units changes due to the pitch of the sloped surface, permitting variations in the plans.
		Building C (2001-) location: Chofu, Tokyo architects: Taira Nishizawa Architects & Associates structural engineers: Arup Japan mechanical engineers: System Design Laboratory producers, general contractors: Home-ing site area: 283.00m2 building area: 230.50m2 total floor area: 637.85m2 1st floor area: 150.28m2 2nd floor area: 207.80m2 3rd floor area: 146.87m2 4th floor area: 107.28m2 5th floor area: 25.62m2 dwelling unit area: 27.31 - 49.69m2 structure: reinforced concrete; 5 stories maximum height: 19,900mm type of dwelling: private, rental dwelling (1LDK - 2LDK) number of dwelling: 13 + 4 shops projected completion date: December, 2003 next back top