Yoyogi Sangubashi Terrace

Yoyogi Sangubashi Terrace is a rental apartment complex located in a dense urban residential area. We aimed to create a futuristic residence that open the doors of healthy and decarbonized lifestyle and designed a prototype of an urban mid-rise residential complex as expediting decarbonization in global. At first, we have considered the business profitability as maximize, the building layout was determined with having a central courtyard to optimize the exclusive area and the number of dwelling units. The courtyard has a feeling like an open and rich atmosphere filled with natural daylight, wind, and greenery, and these elements brought into the dwelling units contribute to realize a comfortable low-carbon lifestyle. By taking a flying corridor style access, each dwelling unit could be not only high secured since the window facing to the courtyard is off from the corridor, but also enable to get a comfortable and bright living room with large windows. The greenery and mid-size trees installed along with edge of a curvy shape corridor are designed to alleviates a crossing line of sight between the residents and it also helps to control their privacy better. In terms of operational energy perspective, by adopting high performance envelope and high-efficiency equipment, we could achieve 76% reduction of primary building energy consumption and “Nearly ZEH-M” certificate which is one of the most challenging grades within mid-scale buildings. The verdant courtyard is filled with the lights and shadows of illuminated plants and buildings at night. The branch-and-leaf silhouettes projected on the ceilings and the shrubs illuminated from upstairs show various expressions. The lights softly illuminating the reinforced-concrete ceiling surfaces without ceiling downlights or handrail lighting create a comfortable yet sophisticated scene. Considering the biodiversity linkage with nearby urban green parks, we planned to expand the habitat network of small life such as butterflies or birds by incorporating native plant species into the site's greening plan. By installing plantings from landscape to even the facade, we have created a new Green Spots in urban, which contributes to make a favorable cityscape with high green visibility.