MMAAA | Miki Motohashi Architects And Associates . photos: © Kenta Hasegawa
The surroundings of this apartment are defined as residential area and semi-industrial area in urban planning and their height are suppressed to low by road diagonal limitation and sun shadow regulation. The void above which nobody can occupy physically is kept as a secondary product of this regulation. In Japan, the city is always going to be renewed by the buildings scrapped and built repeatedly. On the other hand, the void in the sky keeps to exist from the past to present and it is expected to be continued to the future. When I designing architecture in such dynamic urban situation, the void in the sky can be referred as the static foundation, I thought.
By the void in the city
This apartment is composed by 7 studios. They are stacked in 6 floors including a basement floor. Floor height is suppressed to 2,500mm and minimized staircase is located on the centre. L-shaped unit or maisonnette unit by which L-shaped units shifted and overlapped are enclosing staircase core. They are more or less 2.5meters width but long dwelling volumes and their ends are basically terrace or bathroom. This spatial composition allows every dwelling to have multi-directed windows and they can face on the surrounding void thoroughly without generating building back side. Because of the tiny width of each dwellings, all space inside are recognized as perimeter or window side. Whether willing or not, the distance between the body and window is so short that the person inside feels to take a spill to the outside or that the void is held to room inside in bodily sensation.
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