Assessment 2 — Drawing

“A drawing of the city as a collection of architectural eccentricities” a technique used in a book Made in Tokyo by Atelier Bow Wow observes series of buildings and architectural structures which involves unusual and the anomalous. Atelier Bow Wow and its group of students documents the architectural eccentricities of Tokyo. Tokyo is an expensive city where each block of land is unusually high priced and tiny spaces in between buildings becomes highly desirable, as Atelier Bow Wow (2001, p25) states “Tiny silvers of space between buildings, which can only be utilized by cats, are the result, with the high price of land in Tokyo, eventually these spaces become desirable for use.”. For this reason, using this small blocks of land rather becomes necessary in the city of Tokyo. Larger buildings are built at their maximum full extent and structures which may be too small to be called an architecture are created. These includes:

1. Karaoke box

2. Car parking machines

3. Signboards as well as buildings size of a room or corner of a city

Above buildings are designed and built to make use of tiny space, moreover “urban dwelling” is then introduced in city of Tokyo and Atelier Bow Wow (2001, p33) says that “format of urban dwellings observed in the buildings of Made in Tokyo can guide us towards new ways of living in the future urban environment”. This statement clarifies that other cities can find a possible solution for the future of the city to avoid people being driven out to the outer suburbs and city of Tokyo also includes hybridization of buildings being used for multiple instances such as a bridge and apartment being connected together. Therefore, City of Sydney, where buildings are not as densely populated as Tokyo, could possibly model Tokyo to avoid people being forced to move away due to rising population.

Made in Tokyo documents architectural eccentricities within Tokyo. With the technique used by Atelier Bow Wow and group of his students. I’ve tried to implement this idea of “drawing of the city as a collection of architectural eccentricities” into a site, Darling Harbour. What I was mainly focusing on was re-positioning and redesigning the buildings as if they were in Tokyo. As shown on the chapter “Urban Dwelling” in made in Tokyo, list of the following buildings are documented:

1. Bridge home

2. Bus housing

3. Centipede housing

All these documentations are buildings in Tokyo which can be the concept and idea of the life in a future urban environment in another city such as Sydney. Following this idea, list of buildings was then redesigned into my drawing:

1. IMAX cinema was changed into a similar version of a bridge home where it became accessible from the highway not just from the footpath on the ground level

2. Apartment or a residential structure underneath a bridge so it almost becomes like a bus housing in a horizontal axis

3. Re-positioning of Darling Harbour to create an abstract space with full use of field which creates urban intensity

4. Ferris wheel being placed on top of convention centre for buildings hybridized uses.

5. Bridges being created across the buildings to create easy access

6. Eccentric space is created where elevator is now located inside of the bridge structure to access villa.

As a final outcome hybrid programs can be seen, resulting this area as not just a tourist attraction with hotels and restaurants, but it also becomes a residential block in Sydney as well.