A wood-block share office made from timber deemed “unmarketable,” processed small to suppress warping so it can be used in DIY.
Shoto Lanai
Data
- Completed
- 2018
- Primary Use
- Small office
- Project Type
- Renovation
- Structure / Scale
- Reinforced concrete, 4 stories
- Total Floor Area
- 56.75㎡
- Architects
- Takeshi Shikauchi + Masako Shikauchi
- Client
- S Design Farm
- Market Research and Advisory
- Nogan
- Planting
- GA Yamazaki
- Timber Block Fabrication
- Sakamoto
- Contractor
- Yamauchi Komuten + S Design Farm + student volunteers
- Photography
- Kouichi Torimura / Kouichi Torimura Photography
Award
- Wood City TOKYO Model Building Award
- Wood City TOKYO Model Building Award, Encouragement Prize (2020)
A Wood-Block Office That Makes Use of Unsellable Wood
A wood-block small office—a share office operated by S Design Farm. “This wood won’t make marketable building material,” the forest owner says. “Building material” refers to structural members such as the posts of timber houses, but in urban areas, as renovation increases, demand as interior material is rising. There are voices wanting to use good materials while keeping costs down, and DIY is spreading, but wood is a difficult material to handle because it warps. So we processed the wood small to suppress warping, making DIY construction possible. The unit price of the wood itself is higher than the vinyl cloth of distributed new building materials, but by making it DIY work, we kept the total of material and labor costs on par.
