This building is a small aquarium planned at the point of the reclaimed land. It is an educational facility for children, which is composed by an observation room made of reinforced concrete, and a observation deck made of timber. In the observation room there is a 10 meter cube water tank, where you can see all kinds of living things living in the bay. And the observation deck is made to watch the shadows of the fishes which gathers around the mouth of the discharger. The site is attached to the urban area, but inside the coastal industrial region where the general citizen can't access. Since the site was located at the center of the bay, we decided to make a place where the children who lives in the city can feel the nature called the SEA more easily in their daily life.
The theme of this building is SOUND
The plan of the observation room is a shape of crescent. It is made of thick concrete wall and a 30mm steel plate bent in a gentle curve. And in between there is a toplight made of heat rays absorption glass. The interior space has a strange dimension which is 2.7m wide maximum between the walls, and 5.7m ceiling hight. Above the toplight,there is a sprinkler which makes the water flow on the surface, and provides gently reflecting light down to this space. Different texture, and a curved wall makes the sound occurred inside the space reflect in all sorts of directions, and produces a space where sound echoes like a wave. This is a experiment to give people an impression as if there going inside the water while there going down the slope between the concrete and the steel wall.When you go down the slope ,the water tank is placed at the lower part of the concrete wall, where you have to look into. The glass surface which is lower than the ground level associates the sea which might be seen at the other side of the wall. The concrete box on the surface of the water is a space for maintainance. There is an equipment which occurs the sound like the device of the sound of the water drop in the cave, by using the filtered water which returns to the water tank. The unique sound of the water which is made accidentally by the water drops, reflects by the sound reflection plate placed on the upper part of the concrete plate. And pours from the opening, which is like a hole of a resonance box of a string instrument, to cover the whole space of the observation room.
This observation room becomes a space where you can feel the image of the underwater, by the gently reflecting light which comes through the toplight, and the space of sound where echo refrains.
Observation deck is placed at the other side of the path inside the site, and parallel to the observation room. In order to concentrate the consciousness to the sea, the deck is divided by the wall which is composed by the isolated columns like a pile. Since there is a breakwater about 2 meters high, you cannot see the state of affairs from the ground level. When you go up the gentle slope between the continuos column and the breakwaters, you'll get to the deck where you can see the ocean below. This deck is to watch the shadows of the fishes which gathers around the mouth of the discharger. We set up the peculiar point of the sound, linked by the the observation room's outside parabolic wall, to come right above the deck, so that the sound of the sea suddenly gets louder when you go along the deck.
These are the equipment where you can feel the sea. The route for the visitor was settled. The visitors starts from the back of the curved steel plate, and go across the aerial bridge surrounded by glass which is right on the axis of the north and south. This bridge is 800mm wide so that the visitors will get in one line naturally. You go along and get on to the observation deck. Consiousness turns into the sea, by the timber wall on the back. And you'll be surprised by the loud sound of the sea produced by the sound assembler. Down the stairways and toward the water tank room. You can feel the image of the bottom of the sea, by the echoes of the shoe sound and laghter, sourrounded by the sound of the waves and the gently reflecting light, while you go down the gentle slope of the narrow space. Down to the basement level, there is a water tank at the direction of the sea which you have just seen from the observation deck. And go up the stairs to the ground level, you'll come back to the starting point where you made the first access. This is how you can take a small journey to the small sea.
The elements which composes this building is a water tank box, which has an unusual scale and looks like a lump of concrete from the outside, huge concave of the wall, steel plate which became independent by bending. And the element which gives form to the building is the sound. You may call this a building as an huge instrument.
But this project was interrupted by several reasons. If you call a building which you can experience a virtual space and consists as a software a 'virtual architecture', this is not it. This is an equipment which provides all sorts of experience to the visitors, such as hearing the sound of the wave, sound of the echo, and be surprised by the assembled sound. This building is hard to understand unless it is built and able to experience. The experience which this building provides might be a kind of a virtual. But the difference between 'virtual architecture'and this building is that this is an hardware which creates virtual. And in this case wave or the accident called nature becomes it's software.
To realize this image, we went for an advice to all sorts of research organization. The interest thing is that they know how to restrain flatter echo but don't know how to occur them. And there is no way to find out the mechanism of the sound of the water drops in the cave either. This architecture could have been a hardware which realizes the virtual experience which software cannot realize. So for this reason, this was a program which we earnestly desired.
KATSUHIDE UEDA
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