Architect(s): EASTERN Design Office
Address: 3-chōme-10-20 Higashiokino, HIGASHIŌMI, Japan
Latitude/Longitude: 35.097998,136.212428
Photographs: Koichi Torimura
On the Corner is a castle where the boys and girls of the story of Michael Ende could be entering. Square elements configure this triangular castle! The site is a manufacturing area in Youkaichi City in Shiga Prefecture. There are many big factories in this town. Among the local people, there are many immigrants from North America.
An industrial area and also a residential area is where this building is located. Many bars and restaurants are scattered here where such common people gather to drink in a popular area. Close to the town, one can find a highway interchange. When building a house, having a shape of the lot in a triangle form is quite unusual.
The site of the building is where two streets meet at an acute angel which was left behind neither residential nor for industrial development. No one wanted to buy it, and The public sector did not want to invest to change it into a park and no one was interested in buying it, so a lot remained bereft of.
The building is a residential complex in 13 meters high in the shape of a triangle. Its base line is 23m x height 12m x oblique line 26m. It is a typical tenanted apartment house with It has seven rooms, 1-3rd two units on each floor and one on the 4th floor, forming a typical tenanted apartment house.
Each room is composed of a living room of 13m², two bed rooms with 13m² and 9m², a prefabricated bathroom, a kitchen system and a toilet. Town people can easily rent them.
The structure is served through the concrete which is designed carefully and, at the same time, only specific materials are used here. The exterior wall is made out of Square cut stone, concrete and glass formed like scattered cards on it make out the exterior wall. The spread out material would not disjoin with them bounding by a cross.
Architects wanted to build architecture similar to illusion, so they highlighted the discarded lot from the urban framework by emphasizing its shape. Town people required this illusion, as it deceives people to obscure their eyesight and feel invited to another world. It is pretentious, yet it is surrealistic too.
Text description provided by the architects.
Client: TOYO-KAIHATSU Co., ltd
Site area: 261m²
Total floor area: 567m²
Structure planning: HOJO STRUCTURE RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Constructor: Okudakomuten Co., Ltd
Contributed by EASTERN Design Office
