Archery Hall & Boxing Club
· Location Tokyo, Japan
· Architect FT Architects / Katsuya Fukushima, Hiroko Tominaga
· Area 198.75 m2
· Project Year 2013
· Photographs Shigeo Ogawa
The traditional Japanese timber composition is reflected in these projects. Timber, a historical material, has now been reanalysed and transformed into a new building material.
structure & space
The project consists of two buildings, an archery hall and a boxing club, standing a few hundred meters apart on the grounds of Kogakuin University in west Tokyo. The formal rituals of Kyudo (Japanese archery) and the aggressive nature of boxing may appear worlds apart. However, the two built facilities surprisingly share a number of commonalities.
The University’s brief was for low-cost structures made of locally sourced timber to provide accessible and inspiring spaces for the students. Coincidently, both facilities called for a column-free space of 7.2m by 10.8m, a size comparable to the sacred hall in a traditional Japanese temple. In order to achieve this span, without columns and using low-cost methods of timber construction, it was necessary to come up with an innovative timber solution. We began the project by investigating a number of structural forms that would be appropriate for each sport.
The rafters consist of two beams each measuring 120 × 36 mm. Between them, vertical bundles are placed with 4 wood bars each measuring 36 × 36 mm. They feature grooves that serve to brace six layered horizontal 24 × 50 mm bars. This leads to a cross section resembling a stable triangular frame. The frames were set on top of the ring beams via steel angles and connected with 12 × 50 mm wood bars. They lead through all nodes of the horizontal and vertical bars of the triangular frame and are connected to the nodes with bolts.
The roofing consists of galvanized sheet metal. The walls of the wood frame construction are clad in cedar with dark glazing on the exterior and gypsum board on the interior. Despite the strong presence of the roof construction, it emphasizes the openness of the space thanks to its filigree character.
Fonte: Archdaily
