Dappled House
The existing building, built in 1986 at the height of the “bubble economy” period in Japan, is a typical example of so-called “bubble architecture”.
The first floor with the floor area of approximately 100 m² has grand entry features including a revolving door like a hotel and the double-height entrance hall occupying one third of the entire floor. The entrance hall floor is finished with flashy mosaic tiles, which effects are intensified by vivid gold lines on both side walls. Despite the tackiness, I kind of felt envious of such hyper-excitement of the time. It seemed to me that they spent full energy and really enjoyed making this building, and somehow these grand and flashy features felt extremely rich because they were not decided simply based on appropriateness, reasonability or cost-efficiency. Photography by © Kenta Hasegawa
People would ridicule this building as a “bubble kind of thing”. At first, I thought of painting the entire hall white and dismantling the revolving door, but we thought it would be a mistake to just ignore this unique design in front of us. How can we enjoy the entrance hall once more, which people used to enjoy before" Our answer was to think about the way to change the visual impression by placing new things next to it, without changing the hall itself.
We decided to keep the flashy mosaic tile floor, the Italian-style plaster walls, and the revolving door as they are. In order to alle...