shibUyA: ThE MODERN TEChNOsCAPE

An altar to media and advertising, Shibuya, Japan is a digital haven. In this dense metropolis, the relationship between the strobing displays of digital media, the towering and congested architecture, and an enormous collection of city-dwellers, begins to define new parameters for design. Nowhere is this better represented than at Shibuya Crossing: the most trafficked crosswalk on the planet. Here, a radical new piece of architecture is imagined; one that explores the complex dialogue between prototypical private zones and spatially disrupted public zones. This is achieved through kitbashing methodologies and digital representation techniques.

FRANkENsTEiN’s LExiCON

Representationally, this project was to be translated through a series of evocative and cinematic images, inspired by chosen references from film, anime, and games. Here, inspiration draws largely from the technofuturist aesthetics of Akira, Hyper Light Drifter, and Blade Runner.

Through a series of kitbashing and reorienting exercises, a large taxonomy of archetypal plans, sections, and spaces of Japanese hotels, homes, and shops were dissected, bisected, and smashedtogether. The resultant amalgams were then classified by their respective hybrid programs and these new pieces of private-public intersection were fitted to the skeleton of a threepronged skyscraper.

Idiosyncratic and fragmented spatial identities arise from the building’s design methodology. The new “whole”, comprised of its conglomerate “parts” shifts and disrupts traditional ideas of public and private space. At times, dining rooms and home roof gardens flow seamlessly into open shops and theaters. These themes parallel the manner in which many buildings in Shibuya blur the lines between their own residencies with shops and restaurants. Through these maneuvers, a new, transitional language of hybridized spatiality is created that beckons for exploratory inhabitation and a re-imagining of hyper-dense living.

This tower behaves antithetically to many of its neighbors. While the majority of the architecture in Shibuya is adorned with strobing LCD advertisements, this building turns its digital persona inwards, towards its inhabitants. Rooms and terminals in the building lead to zones of digital interaction, some for one and some for one-thousand. The building’s complex and fragmented silhouette is its own statement, in direct contrast to many of the blocky skyscrapers adjacent to it. Comprised of the massive, painted and worn hulls of recycled Japanese cargo-ships the exterior mimics the digital noise of Shibuya Crossing, but its real screens and monitors are subject to the curiosities and attentions of those who explore and those who dwell within.