Building & Investment (Nov - Dec 2015) (Nov - Dec 2015) | Page 18

Project Highlight

HIGO building fuses traditional
elements with modern designs
Award-winning team at nA Nakayama Architects experiments with steel structures
that mimic traditional bamboo. Photos: Ken Goshima
HIGO BUILDING is constructed with steel
parts that is made as slim as possible to mimic
traditional Japanese bamboo. The three-storey
steel structure was designed with “slim,”
“thin,” and “small” in mind. Bookshelves
and books are part of the interior design to
accommodate the vast number of books and
documents.
With hardly any partitioning walls,
one can see outside through scattered
openings. Sitting down in the corner of
the office, sunlight comes through the gaps
in bookshelves surrounding the building.
Looking up through the glass floor, visitors
will feel like they are in a forest with the
illusion of sunlight filtering through the
foliage.
The feeling is like wind and sunlight,
weakened through “twigs” and “leaves”,
caressing your body and you get the sensation
of being enveloped by nature although you are
14 Building & Investment | www.b-i.biz

indoor.
Inside the building are bare steel beams
with all the surface rust left intact during
the construction process. Steel back-plates
of the bookshelves resemble Japanese
water colour paintings and thin steel posts
resemble latticework depicted in old Japanese
architecture. The exterior walls are in natural
colours of the cork; when covered with
moss and plant, it looks as if the structure is
enveloped by nature.
HIGO is constructed with steel parts
made as slim as possible. The main structure
is constructed with 60mm x 60mm, 50mm
x 50mm, and 38mm x 38mm steel beams,
60mm x 128mm I-beams, 28mm x 125mm
flat bars, 40mm x 75mm channel steel, 4.5mm
steel plates, and 1.2mm keystone plates.
The bookshelves are assembled by 38mm
x 38mm steel beams, 4.5mm steel plates, and
40mm x 75mm channel steel surround all four