The foundations are finally complete.

The remarkable thing about building is that even for a small(-ish) house like this the amount of work is substantial.  The sophistication of both the builders and the systems in place to ensure quality is also impressive.

A lot of the work will in the end not even be visible.  In the case of  this house the structural design is pushing the envelope for what is possible with wood.  Part of what makes it possible at all  is that we are using steel bracing in two areas.  The most interesting of the two is at the entrance, where a large concrete beam sticks out from the body of the house, connecting to the floor above only with a slender piece of steel.  Right now it is all visible…

but it will look in the end more like this…

That is still a few months down the road, mind you.

In the meantime, the foundation re-bar was all put in place and inspected – first by our builder’s insurance company, and then by our engineer.

The orange painted plywood sitting on the re-bar is leftover formwork.  It is used here to make it easier to walk round the building and confirm placement of steel, anchor bolt locations and so on.  In this case all went well.  I would say the engineer is more strict, but it is good to have the second opinion of the insurance inspector.

Once everything was put in place, the builder got ready to pour the concrete.  At which point it rained for two days straight, and we were forced to wait for the clouds to clear.    Having cleared that hurdle however things are back on track.  Amazingly, on this tiny site we needed to use a pump truck to  reach into the back.  But the crew are perfectly accustomed to this kind of work and it was all routine.

The concrete is finished and curing.  Ready for the next step.

It continues to amaze me that the Yoyogi house somehow has maintained traction over the last year and continues to be published in journals.  Recently it was in the Korean version of Details magazine, and this month it came out once again in a Korean publication, this one called C3.

The folks at C3 work fast.  We gave them the information only a few weeks ago and already we have two copies on the desk.

A beautiful magazine too.  Considering the speed they produced it I am seriously impressed.  They either don’t sleep or are just that professional.  Probably the truth is a bit of both.

This journal is actually mostly interesting for us because it is the first time we are the focus of analysis by a writer.

Usually we provide the text and it is slipped into the magazine without much change along with the images, but this time the editors added an essay that explains why the project is included in the journal to begin with.  I know it is not really a big deal, but it is a kind of new threshold for us so I hope you will forgive me if I copy the relevant text here.

The article is called Urban How: Infill and is written by Marco Atzori.  It is fairly long, but the relevant bit for us goes like this:

“…And thus internal space or space related to the private realm becomes, in all analyzed cases so far, an element of deep and attentive investigation capable of explicitly highlighting in depth the cultural implications related to social relations that are developed in the contemporary society where the residence is a space of protection from the collectivity.  The private and intimate dimension, expresses today as never before the struggle towards getting physically farther, seeking distance, constructing, as it occurs in the presented projects, a self-referential and isolated space: a space for defense.

Even when the building seeks a spatial continuity with its surrounding space, such as in the case of the Yoyogi House of  frontofficetokyo, still, the private realm is evidently expressed as a protected universe, separated from a context that is construed as a spatially and socially aggressive one.  Is the contemporary residence more than ever a place for individual protection from society and the city?

The Yoyogi House is an example to be examined attentively, as its compositional structure produces a spiral sequence that is based on a filtering landscape, a garden on an inclined plane that is posed in a visual relation to the inside with a series of wide glass planes that open up to the same garden.  The focal point is concentrated on the internal courtyard which although it physically creates continuity with its surrounding, it simultaneously pushes away the residents from the city, and identifies a self sufficient universe that sets spatial and temporal perceptions away from the reality that surrounds it.  Ans thus it is a protective space that does not necessitate physical separation to assert the distinction between private and public, but simply through courtyard spatial solutions (the inclined plane), asserts hierarchy and distinction between the domain of the intimate and the collective.  Just like the other buildings, the main facade does not seek any relation with the outside.  The permeability of the inside is opposed with the hardness of the urban facade, expressed in both the use of materials and the limitation of openings, reduced to a single horizontal and continuous window conceived as an engrave on the facade.  Unlike the other residences, the front side does not have a primary role; it does not highlight itself as a single unit amidst the urban structure, but through a sophisticated choice, it inserts itself as an additional piece inside the dense and chaotic panorama of the metropolis.”

I won’t say we agree with every point, but it is an interesting comment. What is particularly cool is that we are not required to interpret our own work this time.  That is an unexpected kind of freedom.

If interested in the entire article you can download it here (9.65Mb).

our esteemed frontoffice colleague, erez golani solomon recently published a book along with co-author julian worrall and photographer  Joshua Lieberman.  It is a quite good guidebook of the modern city that includes descriptions of the usual suspects, as well as a healthy dose of the unusual ones, which makes it an interesting read even for those who know Tokyo already as well as for the new-comer.

There are a number of descriptions of the book out in the net so I won’t repeat the content here (look here for example.  also some interesting interviews like this one) .  Personally my favorite part is the well-written description of the generic parts of the city, elevated highways, convenience stores, et cetera.  To me these are the things that make Tokyo stand out much more than the buildings, but are so seldom discussed.  After all, Sejima builds everywhere in the world now, but where else can you find highways that feel more like landscape than infrastructure and where convenience stores are nearly as common as snow in Canada?

The book is available from amazon, and for those of you interested in bonus material the authors have started an annex website that is looking pretty cool already and hopefully will have more to come.  well done lads!

astonishingly, the schedule at the moment is to have the wooden structure in place by the end of the month.  to make that deadline the builders are working hard to get the groundworks finished quickly.  For our part we have been busy checking and re-checking plans for formwork, re-bar and anchor-bolt placement, while the crew put down a layer of compacted gravel followed by a 5 cm thick layer of concrete.  This is to ensure a level surface for the formwork.

When the formwork is in place it is harder to place the re-bar, so that comes first.  Finally the scale of the house is becoming at least a little bit clear.

We are building a house that covers two thirds of the site, but rests on a ground floor that covers only a quarter.  Mostly that is to accommodate parking (more on that later).  Structurally the important point is that all the weight of the house has to sit on a pretty small piece of land.   Which is not a problem, except the soil on this site was not up to the task and needed to be strengthened before we could even put in the grade beams.

Translated to reality that means putting in 44 concrete piles, 600 mm round and three and a half meters deep.  In plan they follow the beams that will support the house, and arranged like this:

Before these can be put in though, the existing asphalt cover had to be removed

Then the house was laid out with stakes and strings

and finally the holes were drilled, and concrete poured for the piles

all of which took about 3 days to complete.  The last week we have been checking the construction drawings for the grade beams and the timber structure and waiting on confirmation that the concrete was sufficiently strong after a week of curing.

Next comes the form work for the ground beams.