kensuke watanabe architecture studio

photo: Koichi Torimura

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Project Details:
program : welfare institution
site : Saitama, Japan
size : 290sqm
status : completed
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Project Description:
“The project is a vocational training center for people with emotional problems. By shifting stripe volume one to another, the building will maintain closed facade to its adjacent neighbor while having large opening and transparent view to the front street in dense residential district.”

photo: Koichi Torimura

photo: Koichi Torimura

photo: Koichi Torimura

photo: Koichi Torimura

photo: Koichi Torimura

photo: Koichi Torimura

photo: Koichi Torimura

photo: Koichi Torimura

One Architecture

Frontal view of cut facade and ceramic wall - St. Jozef Health Care Center

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St. Jozef, a monastery dating from the 1950’s is being transformed into a health care centre. The architectural interventions set up a dialogue with the existing characteristics of the complex.

The architectonical interventions set up a dialogue with three major aspects of the building; the structure of the complex around the gardens, the sacral identity of the building and the catholic brick-hiding-the-underlying-concrete-architecture from the 1950’s. Apart from the two existing gardens, in which the former monastery garden reclaims its central position, the design provides a new ‘basement garden’ in the heart of the complex which allows the basement to become commercially exploitable.

Click Above Image to enlarge

Click Above image to enlarge

The design reveals what was to be hidden in the 50’s; the monastery is in fact a contemporary building with modern techniques. By making a hard-cut section in one of the buildings, the true concrete core that was once hidden from the world by a layer of brick, emerges. The exposure of the concrete behind the brick façade is carried on as a design motive in for example the wall of the lower extension of the ‘blood bank’ and in the concrete exterior of the waiting rooms. New artwork is added by Berend Strik.

While the building is not yet officially opened, several publications on Health Centre Jozef have been released. Please click on the following links to download:
NRC Handelsblad, July 17 2009 – Download
De Architect, July-August 2009 – Download

Source: One Architecture
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