Maki's
Hillside Terrace
by Fumihiko Maki
The Hillside Terrace project, a medium-density
mixed-use development of apartments, shops, restaurants, and cultural
facilities, took exactly 25 years from the first plans I drew in 1967 to the
completion of its sixth phase in 1992. Although I have designed buildings and
complexes far greater in physical scale over the past several decades, no other
project has occupied my thoughts so continuously over time as Hillside Terrace
has.
The flow of time can be measured against its diverse
buildings and their relationship to the city of Tokyo as it grew to envelop
them. Changes in the project's architectural character, materiality, and
expression from phase to phase also reflect shifts in my own consciousness with
the passage of time.
The opportunity to design Hillside Terrace — a
commission I received almost immediately after setting up my architectural
practice in Tokyo — was my first chance to confront the idea of modern
architecture engaging, even creating, its urban context.
Though I was unaware of it at that time, the project
would bring me a deeper understanding of the "collective form"
phenomenon that had fascinated me in my early years of architectural study,
strengthening the notion that architecture and cities share a distinct
relationship to time.
In the mid-1960s, the Daikanyama district still
retained traces of the wooded hills for which the greater Musashino region was
once known. After each rain, the air was heavily laden with earthy scents.
Zelkova trees rose high over the low townscape. Downtown Tokyo, though
geographically close, was still perceived as a distant place.
It was in this context that my clients, the Asakura
family, who for many generations had owned a 250-meter- (850-foot-) long strip
of land along Daikanyama's main road, asked me to design a number of apartments
and shops to be built in separate phases. I was still in my late thirties when
I started on Hillside Terrace, and I felt quite fortunate to be given the
opportunity to design several buildings on a single site at that age.
I realized that in designing a group of buildings, I
could also generate exterior public spaces of a particular character.
Spatial character usually determines what is public
in the city. A metropolis can provide overwhelming spaces unavailable in small
cities or villages. However, public spaces in cities do not exist just for
crowds or communities; they are also places that allow people to enjoy
solitude.
Our urban spaces become much richer when there are
many different layers of public spaces and meanings. In a metropolis, people
take strolls, just as people in the countryside go to mountains or rivers; in
that way, they are able to establish a special, spatial relationship between
themselves and portions of the city.
The extent to which streets and other public spaces
suitable for walking are provided can be considered an effective index in
determining the quality of urbanity in a city. Sadly, the contemporary city is
being gradually divested of such public character.
There are certain limits to the types of spaces that
an architect can provide; at best, the spaces they design can form a
relationship with parts of the city bordering on the site to create landscapes
that many people can share. Cities like Tokyo today possess few standards of
urban form.
Architects are required to create new landscapes in
an urban environment full of heterogeneous elements. The challenge is the same
whether the project in question is a single building or a complex of buildings:
the creation of topos in the city through the medium of landscape.
Looking back, I believe that the process that led
from Hillside Terrace's first phase to the sixth phase suggests not only the
changes in our notion of public space and the evolution of modernism, but also
what I would call "the landscape of time."
The singular sense of place that people strolling
among the various buildings and outdoor spaces of Hillside Terrace feel is no
accident. It is the result of a deliberate design approach that has created
continuous unfolding sequences of spaces and views, taking advantage of the
site's natural topography and, indeed, enhancing it with subtle shifts in the
architectural ground plane.
The various green areas, plazas, sunken gardens,
exterior stairs, sidewalks, and transparent entrance halls are interconnected
by views to one another, giving an impression of substantial depth and extent
across the site.
One does not physically experience urban space by
simply gazing at buildings or looking at them from above — space is experienced
only through sequential movement. Like music, movement in space can be a source
of elemental joy, something to which one can give oneself up entirely.
At Hillside Terrace, long views pass through multiple
spatial boundaries created by topography, stairs, roads, trees, and low walls.
Several possible loops are offered for passage through the site and back to the
street, and glimpses of greenery seen around the corner are just as important
as fully transparent views for suggesting a path.
Although their architectural expression has varied in
response to the times, the buildings of phases one through six share a
consistent scale of massing, using a combination of staggered, cubical volumes,
generally one and two stories tall, with apartment blocks frequently lifted
above street level on transparent and/or recessed ground-floor volumes.
Several unifying spatial elements, such as corner
entrances and interior stairs echoing exterior topography, are repeated in
different guises to create a sense of continuous townscape while allowing
localized variations.
Within such an evolving framework, I have viewed each
individual building design from the perspective of its urban presence and
meaning — aiming to discover in this process a modern language for the creation
of group form.
source: www.architectureweek.com
other links:
Maki and associates
www.hillsideterrace.com
