This project is conversion of a thirty-year old company housing into apartment building. Our design strategy was that we only design by ‘subtraction’ or stripping off unnecessary elements, without ‘addition’. And we designed everything on the site, without preparing any drawings nor giving presentation to our client. We stayed at site all the time, and gave instruction to workmen on the spot, as the stripping-off process went on, and worked with them.
This building is located near Sayama City Station, which is about fifty minutes train ride from the center of Tokyo. We were asked to convert this old company housing into apartment building. And upon this renewal the client wanted to make thirty apartment units for rent. The building was composed of “n + LDK” units, which stands for n as numbers of bedrooms, L for living room, D for dining room, and K for kitchen. (L, D and K are all packed in one space.)。It was supposed to be the most efficient and standard solution, but this ‘standard’ ended up in producing boring and unpleasant living environments. Also due to declining birth rate, population in suburbs of Tokyo is rapidly decreasing, and many of old apartment housings are now half-vacant in this area. The owner were concerned about this situation, and asked us to ‘design something new’ to attract more tenants. But the budget was extremely low and our design fee would be extremely small, we had to think of effective work method. And we came up with this ‘on-site’ design process.
Since we could not afford to make new elements, we had to discover ways to re-use existing elements and create new design from there.
And we came to think that it was crucial to wait and see the de-construction process, to get the best result in this “subtraction” or de-construction design method. We started to see that ‘de-construction” was a more powerful act than “construction” on the site.
After unnecessary elements are removed from the site, remained elements will start creating new actions and reactions, and the boring and joyless space will turn into something fresh and new. And these spaces created by ‘de-construction’ are all very unique and one-and-only spaces.
In Japan population is rapidly decreasing, and its economy is slowing down. Many buildings have vacancies, and we architects have to think of what to do with these unused spaces. We no longer need ‘scrap and build’ process, but we have to sustain and create a better living environment by “de-construction” in our contemporary society.
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