LAB #2(41) 2008

LAB project _

the owners of the building plan to rent out. A spicy detail here is that bathroom windows are placed on the external facade; so in order not to excite the curiosity of pedestrians on their way to work and not to disturb the employee morale, which is very strict in Japan, they designed a curtain wall with a complex digital pattern. The facade itself turned out to have two layers; first off, several variants of such “skin” were designed, then two of them were chosen and put together, as both parties claim, to level the difference between the outside and the inside, to conceal it. Another reason for that was to create something that really looked like a flower in the concrete jungle. The only thing that makes one feel a little bit confused is a strange impression that human skin has been put over the box. Because biomorphism implies a more complex and fluent shape, while in this case the shape is too simple; this could be its value and advantage if the architect had just put the structural scheme into shape. And we wish he had tucked toilet windows somewhere, too.

A four-storey office and residence building was placed in one of the districts in Tokyo, and one should mention that the location does not boast sophisticated architectural experiments. What is so amazing about the Japanese is not only anime, but also the fact that in a neighbourhood with standard “c-segment” buildings (and these houses can be an architectural equivalent of some small compact car) suddenly a building with flocks of a giant spider web hanging over it emerges. The double-height space on the ground floor and the mezzanines on the first floor are allocated for offices and a cafe, while two upper floors are taken by loft-like flats, which

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№2 _ 41 _ 2008