Goldwin Harajuku Constructing / Studio Hashimura
Textual content description offered by the architects. The shopper, Goldwin, is Japan’s main producer and distributor of sports activities and outside attire, and this constructing homes The North Face retailer, for which the corporate holds the trademark in Japan. Harajuku, the place the constructing stands, has been vital to Goldwin because the firm opened its first straight managed retailer there within the Eighties. The venture to construct a brand new constructing in Harajuku was motivated by Goldwin’s sturdy attachment to the realm. We had been lucky to design every thing from the constructing to the shop fixtures.
The positioning is slender and irregularly formed. So as to absolutely make the most of the location, the constructing can also be distorted in keeping with the location, however like a church in a European medieval metropolis, there’s a battle and mediation between the distorted plans and the symmetrical façade. The curtain wall spans are completely trisected, and the mullions at each corners are rigorously designed to look equal to these within the center. Though the constructing is barely a small piece of a bigger metropolis block, it’s made to look bigger by its repeatable façade.
The constructing could be very constrained in plan, so vertical motion is emphasised. The ground heights are greater on the higher ranges, like a plant reaching for the sky seeking extra air and light-weight. To create vertical enlargement within the inside as nicely, the bottom flooring and the basement, and the primary and second flooring are related by an atrium and handled as a single house.
In distinction to the metal and glass exterior, pure supplies are used extensively within the inside. The decrease degree of the shop has plaster partitions and ceramic tile flooring, whereas the higher degree has a heat inside wrapped totally in strong wooden.
The bottom on this web site is tender, and the 4 concrete piles that supported the earlier constructing had been too giant to be eliminated and needed to be reused. For that reason, the construction was designed to be light-weight. The primary construction is a steel-braced construction, and autoclaved aerated concrete panels had been used for the ground slab and exterior partitions. The braced construction, which permits for thinner members, additionally supplies a clear, column-free inside house.
