With System Office

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As buildings lots are declining throughout the Tokyo region, almost all available lots are either tightly congested between two large buildings or pushed up against the road.  Facing these issues, the new office building for a contracting firm, With-System, is compressed between a modern twenty-story apartment complex and a late fifties Japanese home.  The site also has minimal penetration of natural light and a narrow perimeter of 3.5 by 8.5m.  Its only distinct advantage is the maximum height allowance of 9m.

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For office spaces, the separation between the public and the private is defined as an asymptotic space: never to meet at a defining curve.  The junction between the asymptotic spaces is isolated by a translucent modular mesh, which forms a curved line traced by crystal grids traveling in a constant direction. The constant direction delineates the outline of both spaces, hence, establishing a spatial dialogue. 

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A translucent glass floor is placed on the second level for office use and to diffuse light to the floor below.  Depending on the time of the day, filtration of natural light from the south delineates the structural outline of the translucent mesh and semi-transparent glass façade suggesting that the spaces inside are volumetrically omnipresent from the inside out.