Courtesy WDG Architecture
The American Institute of Architect’s (AIA) Young Architects Forum (YAF) and Committee on Design (COD) have selected the recipients of the second annual YAF/COD Ideas Competition, sponsored by TOTO. Results in addition to images of the awarded projects with brief narratives from the designers can be found after the break.
Courtesy WDG Architecture
Submitting teams were asked to explore the principles of Universal Design as well as their overlap with the values of social and environmental sustainability. The competition site is the same site proposed for the Olympic Village in the official Tokyo 2016 bid documents, 31 hectares of municipally owned land along Tokyo Bay, within the Ariake-Kita District. Historically, the Olympic Village has served first the Olympic and then the Paralympic athletes in sequentially staged games. Designers were asked to build upon the efforts of the past decade by proposing a vision for Tokyo’s bid for the 2020 Games that is guided not only by socially and environmentally-sustainable principles, but also by the principles of Universal Design. Successful designs would propose identical configurations for the Olympic and Paralympic athlete residences, with no modifications required as the Village transitions from Olympic to Paralympic mode.
The jury for the 2011 YAF/COD Ideas Competition included: Michael Graves, FAIA, Michael Graves and Associates; Hansy L. Better Barraza AIA, LEED AP, Studio Luz Architects; Karen Braitmayer, FAIA, US Access Board; and Walter J. Hood Jr., ASLA, Hood Design.
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Via Aequalitas (1st Place) – WDG Architecture
Courtesy WDG Architecture
Courtesy WDG Architecture
Buildings break from an orthogonal grid, creating dynamic interstitial spaces of varying scale and character. On the east side of the site these pockets become parks, engaging the water and providing green space for the city, while west side pockets are more urban in nature, allowing the existing urban fabric to infiltrate the site. The location of the site at the edge of the urban context eliminates the need for thru streets, which limits vehicular traffic on the site by bringing cars directly into structured parking or loading areas. This encourages experiences at the human scale and allows for more refined control of movement, scale, and experience.
Instead of viewing the building envelope as a barrier between indoor and outdoor space, this proposal investigated ways to interweave the two. This resulted in a system of pedestrian streets located between buildings that link the ground plane to the elevated ground plane. These “Vias” are lined with retail and community functions, providing equity of access to residents and creating a more granular sense of neighborhood. Landscape and hardscape plazas run down the middle of each via providing moments of rest along the gradient.
