Using architecture to compartmentalize the lives of the lonely people in Japan.
After all of our research, we are finally developing our intervention. In the Japanese culture, it is not that the people are anti-social, it is just popular for them to compartmentalize their lives, so we wanted to incorporate that into our design. For our concept, we wanted to design individual experiences in the red-light district that allow one to be alone while he/she is entertained. For instance, maybe the strip club will now be a personal experience with only the guest and the entertainer in the room.
For our preliminary concept, we wanted to design compartments of entertainment will be stacked on top of one another and be surrounded by glass. The compartments we designed are a mixture of all the businesses that occupied the building before we began designing and we wanted to add a public component to the building to offset the red-light businesses. There is a strip club, an adult massage parlor, love hotels, and to top it off, a family restaurant at the top. We kept in mind the interactions between the people coming in and out of these spaces. We wanted our design to be focused around the experiences and the views one would have as they navigate our building. What is it like walking past the man in search of a love hotel or passing the family on the way to the restaurant? All the while, both groups are exposed to the no longer hidden attributes of the building.
From the street, one will be able to look up and see the different types of activities happening inside the building. The different sizes and scales of the compartments give the same effect as the diverse signage one would see walking down our street. The compartments then act as advertisement to those wanting to partake in the activities happening inside.