AS YOU LIKE IT

I made this project for the annual competition of JIIA Japan Interior Industry Association interior.or.jp. The 3D visualization of the project was done by my student Hristo Handzhiyski ico_hana@yahoo.com ffrom the course of specialty “Industrial Design”of the Technical University –Varna.

The topic of this competition was an interiorof the apartment in a block of flats.Only the outside walls had been given.The condominium would be used by 3 members’(later 4-members’) family, coming back from abroad. The wife teaches students at home to ikebana and tea ceremony.

II have chosen for this project the title of the Shakespeare’s comedy “As You Like It”because of the task for flexibility of the space. As for European architect, living in Japan,for me was not easy to image the stile of living of this family: Japanese, Western or any mix between both. In addition when I show to my Japanese colleague and friend K.Kowatary my sketches, she joked that in beginning when F. Ll. Wright came in Japan,he began to do similar things but later he “entered in the right way”.So I was totally lost – everything in Japanese home was opposite from our European logic and I tried to make any symbiosis by the both spatial considerations.

I chose these basic points for the project:
1. To concentrate the corridor, the bathroom, toilet and the kitchen as near as it is possible to the outside pipe space so that avoids loosing of space for rooms.
2.To use almost all-possible windows for living rooms and possibility for natural ventilation.
3.A part of the apartment to be able to function separately from the rest space. Outside visitors could enter in this space directly when the left door in the entrance corridor rotates.
4.Possibility to maximum number of rooms to be closed.