Project

New Community Centre in Shinjuku

Year

2016

Course

Design Studio I

Professors

Yasuda Koichi

Location

Tokyo, Japan

Team

w/ Noemi Gómez Lobo, Hicknbotham Sacha,

Chisato Sasada and Xiaomi Zhi

​

The Tokyo Matsuri Museum and Cultural Information Center will be located on the current site of Shinjuku’s Omoide Yokocho. Omoide Yokocho is a very particular and rare example of small scale, fine grain urban form in the highly dense and congested area of central Shinjuku. This project aims at articulating a mass that allows for a complexity through programming. We attempt to push ideas of a“tangle”seen in sourrounding conditions, where build up shops and attractions are re-interpreted in buidings that have been appropriated. This variety of changed conditions can be seen through the variety of building height as larger spaces colonize the small ones to create visual relations.

The program of this building is directed towards visitors to Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics, and will showcase information about the games as well as a permanent exhibition on the Matsuri culture of Japan. In addition, the complex includes small bars & restaurants, equivalent to that current existing, a supermarket, and separate commercial office space, making the project a complex mixed use “hybrid” in highly dense, complex urban environment, such as here in Shinjuku.