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Snakes and ladders: while small houses are big in Japan, Atelier Bow-Wow's new home pushes the capacity of the micro plot.


When seeking a site for their own home and office, Atelier Bow-Wow found this tricky flag-shaped site, in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo. Cheaper than most due to the planning limitations, they set about organising spaces one above the other, without wanting to establish any significant divides between work and home life. Further limited by sectional constraints, the external profile of the four-storey volume was heavily restricted, with both the north and west facades sloping to maintain light levels to adjacent properties. Internally this eccentricity eccentricity, in astronomy: see orbit.
Eccentricity
Addams Family

weird family, presented in grotesque domesticity. [TV: Terrace, I, 29]

Boynton, Nanny

travels with set of Encyclopaedia Britannica
 was further emphasised, with three split-levels held within steeply sloping structural bays.

Entered via a narrow passageway, the building presents a curious strip of elevation, with two counter-plane windows that fold to provide shelter to the doorway beneath. From here visitors enter the four-storey interior that is effectively a single volume, with the four principal floor decks arranged on the half level, and generous interstitial In a separate window. See interstitial ad.

(World-Wide Web) interstitial - A World-Wide Web page that appears before the expected content page. Interstitials can be used for advertising (intermercial, transition ad) or to confirm that the user is old enough to view the
 landings sitting between. The atelier is the first space that is encountered, spreading across the upper and lower ground floors, and clearly visible from the entrance space. With long runs of shelving shelv·ing  
n.
1. Shelves considered as a group.

2. Material for shelves.

3. An incline; a slope.


shelving
Noun

1. material for shelves

2.
 along the oblique o·blique
adj.
Situated in a slanting position; not transverse or longitudinal.



oblique

slanting; inclined.
 rear wall, the atelier has sufficient space for the dynamic duo
''For the superheroes, see Batman and Robin.


Dynamic Duo (다이나믹 듀오) is a Korean hip hop duo, made up of members Choiza and Gaeko (former members of the trio, CBMass).
 and their assistants, with a break-out space being colonised Adj. 1. colonised - inhabited by colonists
colonized, settled

inhabited - having inhabitants; lived in; "the inhabited regions of the earth"
 on the half landings in between.

Throughout the internal volume, the configuration of the stairs and landings has been arranged to give each space its own unique quality, with a variation in size--with the landings varying from 3sqm to 10sqm--style and orientation. The nature of the spaces also changes as you rise through the building as sloping walls converge to constrict con·strict
v.
To make smaller or narrower, especially by binding or squeezing.
 the two upper levels, where the living accommodation takes on a more traditional domestic scale and attic-like quality, being timber-lined and more intimate in character. Each level has also been given a different orientation, directed by access to specific external views, with the upper ground floor atelier being dual aspect with large glazed glaze  
n.
1. A thin smooth shiny coating.

2. A thin glassy coating of ice.

3.
a. A coating of colored, opaque, or transparent material applied to ceramics before firing.

b.
 windows facing north and south, and the second floor living room being triple aspect, extending the glazing further along the eastern facade.

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This, of course, is only half the story, and as we have come to expect from Atelier Bow-Wow, there is more to this building than immediately meets the eye. Pertinent perhaps to this issue's theme of HOT, this building is in fact a 'massive sweating rock, with a dragon like internal water vein' (whatever one of those is), that forms part of an integrated cooling system cooling system: see air conditioning; internal-combustion engine; refrigeration.
cooling system

Apparatus used to keep the temperature of a structure or device from exceeding limits imposed by needs of safety and efficiency.
. With water pumped from a purpose drilled well, the facade--that is covered in a granule-faced asphalt that holds water--cools the building through a perpetual process of vaporisation, taking latent heat latent heat, heat change associated with a change of state or phase (see states of matter). Latent heat, also called heat of transformation, is the heat given up or absorbed by a unit mass of a substance as it changes from a solid to a liquid, from a liquid to a gas,  from the building's skin and releasing it into the atmosphere. Believe that if you will, but time alone will tell. Bow-Wow certainly intend to remain in this building for the foreseeable future, and are already enjoying the benefit of occupying the wide variety of spaces it holds, with the unexpected forms of internal space challenging and inspiring the architect's own 'imagination of use'. With the extra space--having moved out of their previous two-storey premises that was only 10m long and 2m wide--the architects are already planning new pursuits; growing vegetables on the roof being the first.

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COPYRIGHT 2006 EMAP Architecture
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2006, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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Article Details
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Title Annotation:house
Author:Gregory, Rob
Publication:The Architectural Review
Geographic Code:9JAPA
Date:Aug 1, 2006
Words:560
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