Architectural Symbiosis

By Team IAnD

Photography:Katsuhisa Kida; courtesy the architect

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Ar. Yukio Asari believes that the best architecture exists in concert with the landscape, nature, culture, and climate of the place where it is built; the emphasis always on livability and particularity.

The relationship between man and building is interpreted by various architects in different ways. Ar.Yukio Asari of Love Architecture, designs a building in Shugoin, interpreted as a public –private relationship in 2 distinct dimensions: (1) a dynamic approach to activate the public and private by new boundaries, and (2) a static approach to being public.

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Situated in a city block between a highway and a shopping street, the façade resembles a sandbank. A tall lofty structure clad in bonded and spaced out bricks, the building interacts directly with the public via a 20% floor cover through a long public passage that connects the north and south ends of the small town.

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Two entrances anoint the two ends of the structure. Two long staircases connect four blocks of residences with an open-to-sky atrium at their core. By spatially making the staircases and balconies in the pass-through passage area, 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. 

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The only indication that the passage goes through to the next street is via the gaping holes in the openworks of the privacy-protecting brick walls along the streets.

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Such exterior adjustments of relationships are also effective for the interiors. 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 sunlight passing through leaves. Meanwhile, around the latter, plaster walls, and beyond, discoloured bricks, rough joints, plated metal handles, curtain pipes, and so on can be seen.

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“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,” opines the architect.