Architecture

　Japanese commercial facilities, offices and residences are concentrated in various zones throughout the city. As a result the city’s ‘functions’ are clearly divided. The ‘functions’ of commercial space are more or less limited to commercial transactions. Moreover, shopping facilitated by the internet is even rendering the physical presence of the customer unnecessary.

　On the other hand, although the wall surface of inner city spaces performed the dual role of connecting whilst dividing interior and exterior at one time, the only real connection today is the entrance into the interior space. The exterior environment is excluded from the interior and the building facade becomes an exclusive and tedious thing. This proposal is a trial which plans a new commercial space which combines functions at the surface of the building infusing the street with multiple functions including vending machines, communication space, advertising, a green belt, information and other things inner city space lacks or which are poorly organized. Although a mechanism for connecting inside and outside and conventionally labeled a ‘window’, this new typology alters the enhances the existing function of commercial space.

　The polyhedron panel installed in the surface of the wall has multiple functions, one of them shopping related. The display case offers goods to the consumer in a convenient and efficient manner. A sales clerk is unnecessary, purchasing possible through the use of a mobile phone, whilst security equipment prevents theft. Size and scale of the wall assembly is easily adaptable to the site, the system inherently favouring pre-fabrication of the aluminium componentry with transportation and installation also quickly and easily achieved.

　This concept attempts to regain public space which may be made use of daily through a reorganization of ‘introverted’ commercial space concentrated within the city, ultimately creating a network of public spaces with a public function.