히로시마 중심부 높은 빌딩 사이에 위치한 옵티컬 글래스 하우스는 전면에
많은 보행자와 자동차 그리고 트랩이 왕래하는 전면도로와 마주하고 있다.
하우스 디자인의 첫번째 원칙은 이러한 환경으로 부터 거주공간을 완벽한 분리 시킴으로써
프라이버시 확보와 여유로운 거주환경 구축에 있다.
여기 건축가의 선택은 도로와 하우스 사이에 옵티컬 글래스와 정원을 위치시키는 것에서
시작한다. 내부에 위치한 각 실에서 조망 가능한 정원은 외부의 소음, 자동차, 보행자로 부터
주거공간을 보호한다. 그리고 6천여개의 투명한 글래스 블록으로 이루어진 옵티컬 글래스 파사드를 통해
새로운 오픈 스페이스를 연출하며 6천여개의 시티뷰를 재생산한다.
고밀도 도심형 주거의 새로운 패러다임으로 주목할만 프로젝트 이다.
reviewed by SJ
This house is sited among tall buildings in downtown Hiroshima, overlooking a street with many passing cars and trams. To obtain privacy and tranquility in these surroundings, we placed a garden and optical glass façade on the street side of the house. The garden is visible from all rooms, and the serene soundless scenery of the passing cars and trams imparts richness to life in the house.
Project name: Optical Glass House
Main purpose: Housing
Design: Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP Co.,Ltd.
Structure design: Yasushi Moribe
Contractor: Imai Corporation
Location: Naka-ku, Hiroshima-shi, Hitroshima, Japan
Site area: 243.73m2
Total Floor area: 363.51m2
Completion year: October,2012
Structure: R.C.structure
Sunlight from the east, refracting through the glass, creates beautiful light patterns. Rain striking the water-basin skylight manifests water patterns on the entrance floor. Filtered light through the garden trees flickers on the living room floor, and a super lightweight curtain of sputter-coated metal dances in the wind. Although located downtown in a city, the house enables residents to enjoy the changing light and city moods, as the day passes, and live in awareness of the changing seasons.
Optical Glass Façade
A façade of some 6,000 pure-glass blocks (50mm x 235mm x 50mm) was employed. The pure-glass blocks, with their large mass-per-unit area, effectively shut out sound and enable the creation of an open, clearly articulated garden that admits the city scenery. To realize such a façade, glass casting was employed to produce glass of extremely high transparency from borosilicate, the raw material for optical glass. The casting process was exceedingly difficult, for it required both slow cooling to remove residual stress from within the glass, and high dimensional accuracy. Even then, however, the glass retained micro-level surface asperities, but we actively welcomed this effect, for it would produce unexpected optical illusions in the interior space.
Waterfall
So large was the 8.6m x 8.6m façade, it could not stand independently
if constructed by laying rows of glass blocks a mere 50mm deep. We
therefore punctured the glass blocks with holes and strung them on 75
stainless steel bolts suspended from the beam above the façade. Such a
structure would be vulnerable to lateral stress, however, so along with
the glass blocks, we also strung on stainless steel flat bars (40mm x
4mm) at 10 centimeter intervals. The flat bar is seated within the
50mm-thick glass block to render it invisible, and thus a uniform 6mm
sealing joint between the glass blocks was achieved. The result - a
transparent façade when seen from either the garden or the street. The
façade appears like a waterfall flowing downward, scattering light and
filling the air with freshness.
The glass block façade weighs around 13 tons. The supporting beam, if constructed of concrete, would therefore be of massive size. Employing steel frame reinforced concrete, we pre-tensioned the steel beam and gave it an upward camber. Then, after giving it the load of the façade, we cast concrete around the beam and, in this way, minimized its size.
from dezeen