...We wanted to open out to the exterior as much as possible...We tried using wooden louvers as screens, and tested a variety of materials. Actually, rather than formal “tests”, it was more like getting lost. The vagueness of the definition of the facility itself meant that there was nothing to hang decisions on. The facility is a combination of a mental clinic and day-care centre for elderly suffering from Alzheimer’s disease...In general, a whole variety of such welfare facilities are complementary institutions to the family. While treating the family unit as their premise, it is the very weakness of that unit that provides their raison d’etre - an extremely contradictory arrangement...The discussion around the desirable degree of openness of the cedar slats on the facade was in fact a discussion of that ambiguity... (Riken Yamamoto, “Shinkenchiku”, Mar. 1996)
		Yamamoto Mental Clinic (1994-1996) location: Okayama, Okayama Prefecture principal use: clinic, day-care center site area: 733.32m2 building area: 331.80m2 total floor area: 394.38m2 structure: steel frame; 2 stories maximum height: 6,305mm architects: Riken Yamamoto & Field Shop structural engineers: SIGLO Associates mechanical engineers: DAN Engineering general contractors: Hashimoto Kosan, Fujiki Komuten completion date: January, 1996 next back top