ALTEKA OFFICE BUILDING
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Year: 1991
A
paradigmatic city of accumulation, juxtaposition, and compression, Tokyo is an
index of contingent, tentative relations and new, complex urban realties. Enfolded
within the evolving reality of a mediated age, every Tokyo site is a nexus of
activity that each building tries to stabilize and repress.
This project suggests another relationship to the city. Caught between the traditional city fabric and the Jigamae, a new large avenue, our folded tower suggests that an object is no longer defined by standard of maintaining the appearance, or imposing a law, of constancy, but by a situation in which the fluctuation of the norm replaces the permanence of law, with the object taking place in a continuum. Thus, the object no longer corresponds to a spatial mold but rather to a temporal modulation that implies a continual variation as much as a perpetual development of the form. The object becomes an event, opening up, unfolding. The building evades a purely Cartesian definition by not representing an essential form. Instead, it is a form “becoming.”
This project suggests another relationship to the city. Caught between the traditional city fabric and the Jigamae, a new large avenue, our folded tower suggests that an object is no longer defined by standard of maintaining the appearance, or imposing a law, of constancy, but by a situation in which the fluctuation of the norm replaces the permanence of law, with the object taking place in a continuum. Thus, the object no longer corresponds to a spatial mold but rather to a temporal modulation that implies a continual variation as much as a perpetual development of the form. The object becomes an event, opening up, unfolding. The building evades a purely Cartesian definition by not representing an essential form. Instead, it is a form “becoming.”
Concept
Drawings
Model photos
