House in Izushi
- location
- Hyogo Prefecture, Japan
- function
- residence + factory
- size
- 450 sqm
- structure
- steel
- year
- 1992-94
- credits:
- architect
- Satoshi Okada
- project team
- Yutaka Okada
- photo credit:
- Kenichi Suzuki
-
House in Izushi was a proposal design for a public facility in Miyako City, Iwate Prefecture. The site is located in a long wharf at the mouth of the Hei River to the Miyako Bay, famous for its rias coastline on the Pacific Ocean. The building was a complex of both a community center and a thalassotherapy facility linked to the seaside park. The Mayor, a medical doctor, considered to build it for the citizen's health taking advantage of the marine city. Because of the sad history of many people lost in tsunami in the past, measures to the natural disaster was taken into the building design for mitigating the wave load to the seaside edge.
In the long and flat site, a set of whole design for both building and park was required as an integrated environment. In order to mitigate the tsunami waves, the park was designed at the tip of the wharf, to which the community center building faced. The building is linked to the thalassotherapy building as a continuity of horizontal folded planes shaping a closed circuit. In the community center building, entrance hall with information center for tourism and administration office are planned on the ground floor; restaurant with roof terrace and assembly rooms on the first floor; and meeting rooms on the second floor. While in the tharassotherapy building, entrance hall with a shop, relaxation room, staff room, and machine room are on the ground floor; pools and small rooms for the thalassotheraphy are on the first floor. There are two entrances respectively to each building at the center in-between, where those two facilities are connected at a caf? commonly used from both on the first floor.In the long and flat site, a set of whole design for both building and park was required as an integrated environment. In order to mitigate the tsunami waves, the park was designed at the tip of the wharf, to which the community center building faced. The building is linked to the thalassotherapy building as a continuity of horizontal folded planes shaping a closed circuit. In the community center building, entrance hall with information center for tourism and administration office are planned on the ground floor; restaurant with roof terrace and assembly rooms on the first floor; and meeting rooms on the second floor. While in the tharassotherapy building, entrance hall with a shop, relaxation room, staff room, and machine room are on the ground floor; pools and small rooms for the thalassotheraphy are on the first floor. There are two entrances respectively to each building at the center in-between, where those two facilities are connected at a caf? commonly used from both on the first floor.
Similar to the case of Town Hall in Nakasato, Japanese local authorities have been groping in the dark for self-establishing. Because tourism is definitely one of the means to activate the regional economy, they have been made trial and error with various attempts. Here again, for activating local societies, the role of architectural design becomes larger than before. Distinctively attractive buildings to both local peoples as well as tourists would anchor the younger generation to local regions with a true pride of their own specialty.
Text by Satoshi Okada
