GOOD CYCLE BUILDING 001 Asanuma Corporation Nagoya Branch Office Renovation by Nori Architects and Asanuma Corporation
Architecture in the cycle
Asanuma Corporation, a general construction corporation, is promoting "GOOD CYCLE BUILDING", a project to renovate a 30-year-old building into an environment-friendly building as the first flagship of the project. The existing building frame was utilized and modified to increase accessibility to natural light and wind, and new materials were added as much as possible using natural materials such as earth and wood, so that the building users can be involved in the construction and maintenance.
A variety of soil materials were used for the floors, walls, ceilings, and furniture inside and outside the building. For the raw materials, we used leftover soil from Asanuma's other sites in Aichi Prefecture. The finishing method is adopted only if many amateurs, not craftsmen, participated in the process, such as making marks with their fingers or throwing the soil, so that the wall would be expressed "naturally" through human movements. No impurities are added to the earthen wall (in recent years, petroleum-derived materials and cement are often added to improve durability), so that it can be reused as a material for repainting in the future and eventually returned to the earth. Japanese cedar from the Yoshino forest in Nara, which Asanuma Corporation has a long-standing relationship with and manages sustainably, was used for the interior and exterior of the building, as well as for furniture, fittings, and products. The front façade is made of Yoshino cedar logs of the largest possible diameter from a single tree to minimize the amount of scrap wood generated, maximizing the potential for future use after drying. Stones and other materials used in existing buildings that could be cleanly removed were reused as interior surface materials, while others were crushed into small pieces and hardened with plaster to be used as surface materials for furniture. We also tried to utilize urban waste as a resource. For instance, we have combined existing furniture with surface materials made of waste plastic flakes that have been crushed and hardened by heating , and wrapped existing furniture in knitted fabrics made of recycled polyester yarn from plastic bottle waste.
A building is a transit point in the flow of materials and has the aspect of a "material bank". In order for materials to be up-cycled and continue to be used, it is important to use natural materials in a way that they can be separated from artificial materials, so as to maximize the possibility of subsequent use, and to eventually return them to the earth. As for man-made materials, it is necessary to make the most of the characteristics of existing materials and to transform them into new materials through processing. This project is an attempt to reconstruct buildings as a key element of this new material flow in the city, and to reposition architecture in a cycle that is good for people and the earth, by creating a delightful environment that is connected to the changing nature of light, wind, soil, trees, and plants.
Designer Profile
Norihisa KAWASHIMA
Principal at Nori Architects, Senior Assistant Professor at Meiji University
Registered Architect, JAPAN, Dr. Eng.
Born in Kanagawa prefecture in 1982, Kawashima graduated from the University of Tokyo in 2005, earned his master’ s degree from the University of Tokyo Graduate School in 2007, after which he was hired by Nikken Sekkei. Kawashima became a visiting scholar at University of California, Berkeley and worked with Prof. Dana Buntrock and LOISOS + UBBELOHDE in 2012. In 2014, Kawashima became an assistant professor at the Department of Architecture of Tokyo Institute of Technology. In 2016, Kawashima earned a doctor’s degree from the University of Tokyo Graduate School. In 2017, Kawashima established Nori Architects. In 2020, Kawashima became a senior assistant professor at Meiji University. Now Kawashima is a principal of Nori Architects and a principal of Regional Design Laboratory at Meiji University.
Representative works：Sony City Osaki [2011] , Diagonal Boxes [2016] , Yuji Yoshida Gallery / House [2017] , Saw-tooth Roofs in Ichinomiya[2017], REVZO Toranomon [2020] ,and GOOD CYCLE BUILDING 001 Asanuma Corporation Nagoya Branch Office Renovation[2021].
Representative awards: The Prize of Architectural Institute of Japan [Architectural Design], 1st Prize in the 7th Sustainable Housing Award from IBEC, 1st Prize in JIA Sustainable Architecture Award 2020, Good Design Award 2021 Good Design Best 100, Sky Design Awards 2021 THE NEW BLACK BRONZE and many others.
Nori Architects WEB：http://norihisakawashima.jp/profile/