MAKUHARI BAY NEW TOWN
TOKYO Bay Japan 1996
Description +
PROGRAM: 190 units of housing, retail and public facilities
CLIENT: Mitsui Fudosan Group
SIZE: 289,000 SF
STATUS: complete
The new town of Makuhari is sited on a dredged fill at the rim of Tokyo Bay. Our concept interrelates two distinct types: silent heavyweight buildings and active lightweight structures. The silent buildings shape urban space and passage with apartments entered via inner garden courts. The concrete bearing walls have thick facades and a rhythmic sequence of openings. Slightly inflected according to sunlight they gently bend space and passage. Celebration of natural phenomena is taken up by the lightweight “activist” forms. Individuated “sounds” invade the heavyweight “silence” of the bracketing buildings. Inspired by Basho’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North, the semi-public inner gardens and the perspectival arrangement of activist houses form an inner journey.
Ecological Innovation +
− Green space in inner garden courts
Credits +
architect
- Steven Holl Architects
Steven Holl (design architect)
Tomoaki Tanaka (project architect)
Mario Gooden, Tom Jenkinson, Janet Cross, Terry Surjan (project team, master plan)
Anderson Lee, Sumito Takashina, Sebastian Schulze, Gundo Sohn, Justin Korhammer, Bradford Kelley, Lisina Fingerhuth, Anna Müller, Jan Kinsbergen, Hideaki Ariizumi (project team, design development/construction)
associate architects
- Kajima Design
Toshio Enomoto, Masahiro Shimazaki, Kazuhiko Funo, Akihito Morino, Yashushi Ninomiya (project team)
- K. Sone & Environmental Design Associates
Konichi Sone (principal)
Tomoko Watanabe (project architect)
Yoshihiro Kanamaru, Hisakazu Ishijima (project team)
engineer
- Kajima Design
block design coordinator
- Konichi Sone
block architect
- Toshio Enomoto
- Kajima Design
landscape architect
- JUKA Garden and Architecture
lighting consultant
- L'Observatoire International
general contractor
- Kajima Design
- Kaisei
- Mitsui Fudosan Group
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Awards +
- 1997 JAPANESE BUILDING CONTRACTORS SOCIETY AWARD
- 1993 NYC AIA Architecture Project Award
