Japanese architects Atelier Tekuto have designed the Twin-Bricks House in Urawa-ku, Saitama, Japan.
The building consists of two wings; one contains five rented apartments (left above) while the owner’s family home is in the other.
The family home is set further back from the road than the rental wing in order to accommodate the owner’s collection of cars.
Photographs by Makoto Yoshida.
The following information is from the architects:
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Twin-Bricks
Twin-Bricks, consists of two wings - the five rental dwelling units and the owner’s two-family house is located in a quiet residential area, just 15 minute-walking distance from the JR Urawa station. In order to secure some space for the owner’s car collections, the Owner wing (RC Wing) stands nearer to the road than the Rental wing (S Wing).
The Rental wing partly has ALC panels as well as glass blocks. This building, based on the “Crystal Brick” completed previously, enables these ALC panels, not only glass blocks, as aseismatic elements in order to improve cost-effectiveness.
The physical similarity of glass blocks and ALC panels was focused and this structure was realized after a series of experiments. As a result of these experiments, it is concluded that the safety of the building is advanced because ALC panels are destroyed before glass blocks.
With ALC panels randomly located, walls, columns and beams cannot be clearly distinguished, therefore, an intriguing spatial composition is materialized.
The RC wing adopted the “RC structure + exterior thermal insulation” construction method developed at the Atelier Tekuto Co., Ltd., with the purpose of alleviating working noise at the garage and securing privacy and performance of the Owner wing.
A huge cost reduction was attempted by using enhanced high-pressure woodwool cement boards and integrating the boards as formworks. Also, original tiles were developed after careful consideration.
The contrast between heavy RC wing and light S wing and between glass blocks and ALC panels, both of which show similar physicality while different materials. The spatial contrast generated here is making the space more exciting.
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Posted by Rose Etherington
July 13th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Modernism lives! And I love it! Scrunch your eyes and you can imagine this is Paris ‘tween the wars. What other activity is planned for the bathrooms. Is this also the bedroom ala Corbu? I guess the Japanese tune out the power poles and wires.
July 14th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Electric toilets? whatever next.
July 14th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Using public space/volume for WC!! Genius!
July 14th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I guess those bathrooms are only possible in japanese culture or prison cells. I know I don’t wan’t to be seen, heard or smelt while taking a crap.
July 16th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Building on the left works well but not really feeling any relationship between the two, bit disjointed visually for my liking.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
great composition of form, shape, volume and color. although, both buildings are very different and there is no math between them, I love them. I saw something similar and very futuristic, in my trip to Bogota, Colombia, South America… nice modern and futuristic buildings.