Description

Urban context

Shinonome Canal Court lies about five kilometers south of the center of Tokyo,
near Tokyo Waterfront City. This blocklike megastructure houses two thousand
units for living, working, commerce, and social facilities. The project of
developing the whole area was assigned to six architectural firms, each of which
designed one part of the large-scale structure around a courtyard. Connecting
elements within the site include the S-shaped arcade street and the
fourteen-story building with its unified facade. This permitted an autonomous
“city within the city” on a site of maximum density. Block 1 is located on the
southwestern end of the site and consists of an L-shaped fourteen-story building
with a shorter slab inside the courtyard. The 420 apartments, some of which are
on two stories, range from 47 to 125 square meters and were developed as living
and working units.

Ground-floor zone

The residential slabs form the base for a low courtyard, structured by the
shopping street and atriums that have been stamped out. In addition to shops and
other commercial units, there are parking places. The roof of the one-story
structure is completely covered with a wooden surface and is used as a
semipublic open area. Public access to the vertical city above it would be
desirable but is prohibited for reasons of cultural resentment and general
security measures in Tokyo.

Building structure

This project is characterized by making use of the urban potential of a large
volume by combining working and living within a vertical structure accessed by a
semipublic, three-dimensional system of corridors and communal plaza-like
expansions. In a rhythm determined by chance, two-story loggias are stamped out
of the building’s volume. Groups of eight apartments form foyers that can be
employed for a variety of uses (studios, offices, etc.). One quarter of all the
apartments face these shared terraces, which at the same time provide
ventilation and light to the broad interior corridors that provide access to
apartments on either side with views in one direction.

 

Facade

The building has not only an urban facade directed outward but also one oriented
toward the system of access. The interior corridors have a different striped
color code for each floor, and it can be read on the walls, on the terraces that
extend through the building, and on the exterior facades. All the apartments
have a transparent entrance element. Getting light well into the apartments
necessitates facades and partition walls that are as transparent as possible.
The units, some of which occupy two floors, have a spatial zone similar to a
work station that is oriented toward the access corridor, floor plans that can
be altered by means of folding walls, and a bathroom that is located on the
outer wall next to the narrow loggia and is transparent in relation to the
living space.

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Originally published in: Ulrike Wietzorrek, Housing+: On Thresholds, Transitions, and Transparencies, Birkhäuser, 2014.