Sreed Ebisu T Office Building

Yasuhara's architectural intervention operates through a sophisticated vocabulary of spatial and material signs that communicate contemporary values of lightness, transparency, and vertical aspiration within dense urban conditions. The spiral staircase functions as the primary symbolic element, its helical form evoking universal archetypes of ascent, growth, and transformation found across cultural traditions from DNA double helixes to ancient ziggurat ramps to baroque palace stairs. The choice of white as dominant chromatic expression carries accumulated cultural meanings suggesting purity, modernity, and distinction from contextual earth tones, while also functioning practically to maximize reflected light and visual presence within the shadowed urban canyon. The verticality of the composition may be interpreted through archetypal frameworks concerning aspiration, achievement, and the human impulse to rise above circumstance, the tower serving as material manifestation of upward striving. The transparent balustrades encode contemporary values of openness, visual connectivity, and the dissolution of traditional boundaries between interior and exterior realms. The rhythmic repetition of identical floor plates suggests democratic equality across vertical hierarchy, each level receiving equivalent architectural treatment regardless of position. The integration of circulation as external sculptural element rather than hidden service core reverses traditional architectural hierarchy, celebrating movement and human activity as worthy of formal expression. The narrow proportions themselves become symbolic, demonstrating that constraint generates creativity and that elegance often emerges from limitation rather than abundance, a particularly resonant message within cultures valuing efficiency and refinement.

This project is a nine story office building in central Tokyo that aims to create a new prototype for urban timber architecture. The proposal was a hybrid structure of a steel post and beam frame and timber seismic frames inserted into it. This timber frame, named seismic timber lattice shell, is not only a structural but also an interior element to realize new workspaces where people can work in a more relaxed mode, enjoying the spatial value of the timber construction.