丨日本大分

TAKAO SHIOTSUKA ATELIER

SJ bldg.

photo Toshiyuki Yano

SJ bldg.

Oita, Japan

2018.05

158m2

As the intersection of living and opening.

This is a three-story RC building complex in the downtown of a castle town. The site is located at the intersection of the main road into the approach to the shrine, where a liquor store was once operated and served drinks to the visitors. It was a place with deep ties to the community. The building is structured like a three-dimensional townhouse in which a wine shop on a ground floor, a grandmother’s house, a canteen, and the owner’s house are spirally stacked along a ramp. Each of these spaces can be said to be independent and unconnected in terms of their uses, but they are organically connected. The residents’ lives are made up of that, so the whole is considered to be a house. The wine shop will continue its relationship with the community, while the cafeteria will serve the elderly who attend the nearby hospital. I aimed to create an architecture that creates an open relationship with its surroundings. There are no stairs inside the building, and each room is approached through an outdoor ramp. As you climb up the spiral, you can feel the scenery of the castle town from various directions and heights on a daily basis. This change in height creates a variety of interior spaces with varying floor and ceiling heights. The slope gives the interior a different look and makes it opened. The building is connected to the road on four sides, including the alleyway between the building and the neighboring land, and a ramp creates a relationship with the street as an extension of the approach and alleyway. This ramp, which can be considered a multi-level alley, is designed so that the elderly commuting to the adjacent hospital can drop in on their own. It also functions as a tsunami evacuation response in the time of Nankai Trough earthquake assumed.