Home renovation for a young couple. By re-examining the previous layout, where the space was cut into small pieces, we maximized the depth and volume by creating one large space which gives more mobility to the rooms. At the same time, we have set up sliding doors which create partitions when necessary. Regarding the design, it is playful as there are red and blue colors that appear only when you close the doors. It is a stylish touch, just like colored lining of some garment.
The play of colors was extended to the electric cables, furniture, and backsides of doors. That is why the house is called “Bico”, named after the French word “bicolore” The red and blue colors in a rather simple, large space are symbolic for the newly married couple, and of the beginning of their new life together.

This is a renovation project of a nondescript apartment. Client is a painter, bought a room in an apartment built 25 years for herself to live in. The client’s request was that she wants to have a small studio that also functions as a living room.

When the preexisting wallpaper of the room was removed, the walls and ceilings made of concrete bared old dirt and repair putty surface. To use as a studio, this kind of rough finish seemed appropriate, but as a living room it seemed too dirty and stark. I decided to turn this into an advantage, to make use of this unique texture of the concrete by complementing it.

I translated the procedure used in stencil graffiti. By pasting a resin stencil on top of the concrete wall and painting white on top of it, the rough textured concrete and the newly painted white parts are intertwined.

The aging of the building is not only about becoming old. It has some very special quality that can be cherished, very similar to a favorite dress being remade. We think that the dirt accumulated is a part of a small history of this apartment

that is handed down from one owner to the other. New texture promotes a strange harmony when mixing with the old.

The project is an intervention of an aged shed situated in a small port town of Hitachinaka city, Ibaraki.
The owner finally decided to demolish this rusty timeworn shed this spring. The finishing blow that determined its fate was the tsunami that devastated the area two years ago. We, who were looking for a location for a kiosk for an art event which was booked for the same timing as the demolition, decided to borrow this shed and add a bit of face-lift for its twilight days.

Using leaves collected by local students, we held an art workshop. We press-dried the leaves as you would to make dry flower, attached them to the rusted corrugated wall by magnets and spray-painted over them. When these leaves are then peeled off, the pre-existing texture of the old building becomes revealed almost as if the old memory is excavated along with it. We would then use the leaves that were peeled off as a part of a kinetic art. Leaves are placed all around the shed as if to retrace the shape of the building.

For the duration of the summer art event in this small port town which still the scar of the earthquake disaster remains, the leaves mobile that has replicated the memory of the building passively sways with the slight air movement giving a sense of coolness to this small resting kiosk like a “ Fulin ”(Japanese glass wind chime).