Retail building in Itabashi, Tokyo
AQUA
2021
The project initiated from the client’s curious conceptual imagery: a small glass bottled that arrived on a wave and beached on shore. Thus the characteristics associated with water like transparency, reflection and refraction became important components of the design.
It is no easy task to express the fluidity of water with the very static nature of a physical building. We explored the use of colored glass and played with light. The grid lattice work on the facade is an abstraction of a fishing net that might catch a floating glass bottle. In the actual application, the transparency of glass also helps to communicate what’s contained in the building, which is crucial to retail spaces.
All this somewhat eccentric meditation on design was necessary in order to create something out of the ordinary. It was the client’s urgent desire that his architecture should not become a mundate concrete-and-glass box. Instead, it has to nestle on an urban site, be a part of an environment and become a place of serenity in this bustling city. At the same time, the architecture must forcibly announce its presence among the visual chaos of the commercial district around Narimasu train station.