ADS-C 2019 Shingo Masuda Studio
Hidden Resource in Urban Condition
The possibilities of overlooked architectural elements
A city is consisted from numerous buildings. It has various programs and building types, such as residential, housing complexes, commercial and public facilities. Every single building is complete as individual in most cases. And until this modern times, it seems to have focused on just designing each. But our city has reach a certain point where more than necessity is existing. Then what must be designed from now on, where everything is there and enough of things? Try developing once more from everyday experience rather than birds eye view like the past may give us a new point of view.
Architecture and city we touch in everyday living is not simple at all. It is complicated. The image of city is a gathering of elements that architectural design has hardly reached to design in this modern times which are small elements that have been overlooked in architectural design. Imagine an ordinary residential area. Group of Houses of various times, types, and styles. All buildings are some what “designed” by someone. Actually “selected and assembled” fits more to the situation. For example, rain gutters. Regardless of the age of the house, way of installing, meaning of existence basically hasn’t changed for decades. It has not evolved. The boundaries between the street side, walls and gates on the border between neighboring areas have not changed as well. In that situation, the residence is more rapidly destroyed and rebuild. Doors, windows, eaves, verandas that appear on the facade as well. Those actually creates the image.
There is no single architecture in the city. City is a group of architecture. So we should think city in group of architecture. But not Mike the past, by just group of buildings. Pick up the existence of “less than architecture” that appears repeatedly or shared and continuous in a city. It should be able to influence the architecture in conjunction with the internal space of buildings and conform the existence of completely new values and structures. That would be the charm of urban existence that emerge from series of small architectural design.
This studio starts with focusing on the elements that were overlooked in the context of architecture, but we think is that this is the core of urban task. We will capture reality and imagination simultaneously so that can be implemented in urbanism and architecture that are constantly updating and breathing. It is necessary to reconsider miscellaneous matters that were overlooked in the architectural design until now and sublimate them into the new possibilities.
