Hokkaido, Japan
This project is a complex of community based clinic tenants, salon-type shared offices and accommodation facilities and private housing by a local company with a long history in Hokkaido. Miyanomori, the site of this project is literally, as it is named, surrounded by sacred greenery in Hokkaido’s Jinguarea. And corresponds to Sapporo’s highest level residential area. The project is located in a symbolic place, in the tip of a triangle at the foot of mount MiyanoMori. The word that came to mind with the client was “hill”.
“Hill is a symbol of the center” said Hara Hiroshi, who surveyed villages around the world. The dispensary which is the center of the community. The clinics who are the center of life. The company history which used to be at the center of Hokkaido. And the salon on the top floor where the next generations of Sapporo gather. The architecture was designed as a mineral, a stratified entity as a symbolic hill. The exterior walls of the different floors are made out of metal plate with different roofing methods and layered on top of eachother. The staircase in the atrium leading to the top floor with an irregular volume, serves as a gallery of history.
