The site faces not only a wide street with heavy traffic but also a subway station. We thought wasn’t appropriate to adopt steel structurebecause of noisy neighborhood, even though the towering ratio was close to 5. Adopting RC structure, columns and beams might becometoo unwieldy objects in asmall room whose area is 30 square meters or more. But if the spaces between columns and beams could be considered as niches that would provide cozy rooms that protect the inhabitants from noise and vibrations.
A number of six columns structure instead fourwas adopted in order to keep thestructure smaller as to create between them asuitable space for a comfortable living.
The sizes of the structural members become smaller processing to the upper floor in order to reduce the drawing force of earth anchor during earthquake.
This reduction of structural members varies the depth of the niches inversely proportionallycompared to the distance from the noisy ground.
The width of the column is twice wide, large as the shoulder width whereas the beam height is almost west-high in lower floors, enough to enfold a human body as in a small cave. On the other hand, in the upper floor the thin columns and small beams create an expansive sheltered room.
The dimensions areslightly adjusted so that they could be used as benches, low tables, bed spaces, and tables. Anyhow we tried to avoid one to one correspondence of use with each gap,as we considered preferable if the inhabitantsthemselves actively use them sizing by their bodies.
