Jun’ichi Ito Architect & Associates | Rest Villa Funabori

in Architecture by editor — 1:17 pm | October 25, 20120 comments

Architectural Main Concept

This project is located near an elementary school and park in a residential area of a Tokyo suburb. The site has an 8m road on the north side, a 12m road on the east side, a 6m road on the south side, and a factory and a two-story old house on the west side. Five crossroads are on the northeast corner. The building is a five-story nursing home with 100 rooms. On the first floor of the building, there are a huge dining hall, public bath, and administrative office for public functions. The second to the fifth floors include 25 private rooms and shared spaces in each floor, such as a living room and small bathroom.

© Naoomi Kurozumi

© Naoomi Kurozumi

In severe site conditions, this project had requested 100 private rooms, along with the necessary public areas, parking lot, entrance slope, and so on. Therefore, a triangular shape has been derived owing to a clear diagram of public and private zoning and migratory of the program. A triangular center area on the standard floor has been designated as a public zone. The ceiling of the triangular area has been kept transparent in three places. Two areas have been kept open and falling rain or snow is visible. One is a light court with a glass skylight. The three triangular areas allow natural light to enter the room, ensuring that the corridor space is always brightly lit. In addition, the space above and below the layers of light are connected and enables residents to communicate with each other.

© Naoomi Kurozumi

Migratory triangles in public spaces have excellent functionality. For the rehabilitation of elderly patients with dementia, there is no migratory triangle dead end. From the dining hall on the first floor, elementary school children can be seen in the neighborhood. There are opportunities for the elderly to make eye contact with children and to visually communicate with them. It is very important for the elderly to communicate with children. The architect considered it important to create space for two purposes: for the elderly to communicate with nature and with people. The building has a pre-stressed concrete (PC) structure. The PC structure is the technique that controls the stress of the concrete section by using highly strengthened PC steel wires and PC steel rods.

© Naoomi Kurozumi

© Naoomi Kurozumi

This technique has been applied to the private rooms and the central core area to create bearing walls in this plan. Furthermore, we used no pillars by applying rahmen structure with earthquake-resistance walls composed of pillars and beams that have same thickness of the walls. This gives the elderly and people with wheelchairs comfortable accessibility. On the other hand, the entrance needs a parking area and no pillars can be facilitated to it; therefore, we decided to apply both PC technique and Vierendeel structure to the construction of the entrance. This building has been constructed with high-technology taking advantage of advanced technique of PC structure. Rest Villa Funabori is a unique triangle-shaped nursing home possessing a comfortable design for the elderly living there and functionality with highly advanced technique.

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