More than 100 years have passed since the 1896 Meiji-Sanriku Earthquake and Tsunami, which killed more than 20,000 people, the number of victims however still exceeded 20,000 in the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. Thus, the government had opened up a “new era of disaster prevention and mitigation and national resilience” with the determination to drastically reduce the lives lost due to major natural disasters. The site is located in Sumida which is determined one of the riskiest areas in Tokyo, Japan, and citizens frequently suffer from natural disasters such as earthquakes and fire. The proposal aims to demolish the vulnerable buildings which contained combustible materials and non-seismic resistance structures; then to rebuild residential blocks that can accommodate double the population from where has been demolished. By using a modular structure, the new elderly accommodation demonstrates a “dentistry” redevelopment strategy responding to the seismic principle featuring the firmly standing Japanese Pagoda: offsetting vertical structure and flexible sideways joints, that allows “sneak dance movement” during earthquakes, while the idea of human-centred design focuses on enhancing occupances’ quality of life and fostering a sense of community and belonging. Especially for elderly residentials, it is important to explore an architectural solution that is comfortable, accessible, healthy, and safe. Design specifications on the elderly’s needs and their daily habits are mainly considered, regarding the home is where the elderly spend most of their time in. In Japan, creating an environment that contributes positivity toward emotional and psychological needs widely depends on serval factors. 1. Structural resilience 2. Evacuation planning 3. Psychological well-being needs.
Kim Lee
Project description
The proposed residential development should be seismic-proof with high fire safety standards. This is especially important in the context of Tokyo where the risk of structural collapse and urban fire is high due to the frequent seismic activity. This will be resolved through the combination of flexible and rigid joints, a core system and floor isolation method, as referenced from the historical Toji Pagoda in the precedent study. However, the seismic prevention approaches focus on the benefits of using wood as structural material. For better fire insulation, other materials with greater fire resistance should also be considered like the steel structural approaches. The following seismic principles: 1. Shibashira: counterbalances the powerful swaying force created by the seismic wave during the earthquake 2. Floor Isolation: the levels are isolated by the flexible joints in between, the consecutive level starts to move in an opposite direction, overall creating the ‘snake dance’ swaying movement 3. Bracing and Joint System: control the parts of the building where the greater movement should happen and the orientation of the movement is also given by combining rigid and flexible joints.
The sheer scale and density of low-rise timber houses in Kyojima suggests that a more effective splitting of the “soft yolk” is necessary for the neighbourhood through the hard shell approach. Since a clear street widening programme is already completed at the north end (above the Keisei Hukifune Station) and the redevelopment of the south-eastern area of the site boundary has already started by the government, the new development will be situated along a belt between south of the station towards Yotsume-Dori Avenue. Such a proposal will create a new North-south corridor in Kyojima that naturally forms a new “inner hard shell”, which organically protects both sides of the residents. The intended development in the site will also provide more greenery and public space, therefore more evacuation space for residents in Kyojima in the event of a large urban fire.
To make way for improve safely and dense housing environment, vulnerable buildings, including old generation and poor fire-resistant houses along the local street will be demolished. This creates spaces for greenery parks and wider streets that forms a semi-hard shell that links to the train station. Referencing the Habitat 67’s Modular Housing System, the building shape breaks the tradition orthogonal high-rise that allows to accommodate the neighbour buildings (in practical, buildings that are well fire-proof and have no reason to ease). It provides great flexibility in scale and shape that allows each unit to customise its own housing prototype, also to build in variant of storey according to the population demand and the regulation of building height required for a hard-shell building. Differ from Habitat 67’s concrete box approach, the new built will consider using steel frame as the main structure, plus fire-proof cladding regarding the principal developed in stage 1 & 2.
This approach can play with the floor height and the width based on the unit of flat that relates to the seismic offsetting features in the pagoda studies (need to future investigate with GSA). In terms of seismic resistance, the units are constructed in stacked module structure which refers to each individual module units is connected with each other on-site to form the entire building. Instead of each floor, each unit is isolated with one another by connecting them with dampers and steel brackets. Thus, the gravity and lateral loads caused by wind and earthquake are transferred by the inter-module connection, the intra-module connection and module-foundation connection for the frame supported module.
Flats Prototype
Plans
Section Drawing
Perspective Elevation
Technical Drawing
Isometric Drawing
Kim Lee
