Superannex

The city of Tokyo operates with extreme juxtapositions of scale; from small shophouses to large-scale office towers. Large scale developments such as Nishi-Shinjuku deactivate the liveliness of the ground level as the skyscrapers divide the street into large city blocks. Ginza 6 and Ameyokocho are examples of conditions where large development or infrastructure is elevated in the air and smaller scale shophouses and storefronts activate the streets below. They also suggest the idea of placing a new ground above the existing. This arrangement allows users to experience multiple conditions of groundscape as they travel vertically.

The project also speculates on the idea of rooftop urbanism which is essentially rooftop communities. Rooftops are able to make not only visual but physical connection with theintimate adjacencies of building blocks. The shared communal space can grow beyond the site boundary of each building and it gives a more flexible layout of activities that can take place within each rooftop communities. These communities might be constructed as a metabolic process that can expand from rooftop to rooftop. This can be seen as a remnant of Fumihiko Maki’s
idea of “Group Form” and the radical practice of metabolism.

Sectional urbanism operates in four different levels; underground, ground, rooftop and new ground. It is an opportunity for various conditions of adjacencies between levels and buildings to occur, stimulating the idea of a transformative environment in Tokyo.