The Minimum “STUDIOLO”s are stacked in a quiet residential area in central Tokyo.“Minimum” is not an exaggeration.There are 2 buildings. Building-A has 6 rooms only in 28.2 m2 site area,73.5m2 floor area.Whereas, building-B has 6 rooms in 32.2m2 site area,77.9m2 floor area. Each building is about a size of a house in Tokyo.
6 houses and common stairs in 5 levels in each building were demanded.So that most of rooms are three-dimensional with inner stares.
Although we have an experience designing “Space Block Kamishinjo” (1996) by putting a cube of inside dimensions 2180mm together and have realized an apartment complex,12 STUDIOLO is too to compare with it.
At first,we started to consider each room should be as “tea-ceremony room” to laminate in the modern city because of its size. We went to Kyoto and visited several tea-ceremony rooms as references. We were thinking how to provide partitions and windows, and how light reflection enlarge space depend on wall materials at the space.
However,just after starting to design, we realized that this architecture did not become the guest room as “tea-ceremony room” but room for personal. It is the minimum space for private. Tea-ceremony room is really accompanied by large back zone and only room for treating guests is condensed and appeared. Therefore, is it aesthetics of the reduction of“Hojoki” (Japanese essay written by Kamono Chomei describing 13c’s life from 3 square meters room) rather than tea-ceremony room? Or, it may be “Shicyuu-no-kankyo” which means retired lives separated from society in a city.
By the way,I called this architecture “STUDIOLO” finally because I would like to give it the meaning of original “study room” appeared around Venice for the Renaissance period when typography is invented and the citizen could possess books individually.
The texture of wall surface is scratched off roughly in order to find white space in such small space which walls are in front of the eyes.
We put vertical uprights through the RC wall surface so that the room is formed by only “installation” instead of furniture. In addition,we hide “daily life” such as electric switch, intercom and lighting equipment to change the scale of the space perceptually.
After having experienced of visiting all 12 dwelling units successively, you may find that it is a mysterious building feeling extent of the space that you cannot imagine from 150 square meters that appeared.