{"id":48279,"date":"2014-06-08T06:01:04","date_gmt":"2014-06-08T04:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/tokio-sellinhabit-maison-hermes\/"},"modified":"2017-10-26T17:58:02","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T15:58:02","slug":"tokio-sellinhabit-maison-hermes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/tokio-sellinhabit-maison-hermes\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokio sell\/inhabit – Maison Herm\u00e8s"},"content":{"rendered":"

French Group Herm\u00e8s chose the Ginza district, in the heart of Tokyo, for its Japanese headquarters, a 6000 square metres buildings of shopping space, workshops, offices, exhibition and multimedia areas, topped by a French-style hanging garden. This project was both an esthetical and technical challenge. How, in the architectural diversity of Tokyo, could a \u201clandmark\u201d building be conceived, that would comply with the strict anti-seismic standards in Japan? The idea of a \u201cmagic lantern\u201d lighting up in Ginza, like the ones traditionally hung at the doors of Japanese houses, soon made its way. The 13-floor building (3 underground) is 45 metres long and 11 metres wide. Its facades are entirely made of 45×45 cm specially designed glass block, the result of industrial development. These are the materials used to weave this \u201cglass veil\u201d, creating a continuous and luminous screen between the serenity of the inner spaces and the buzz of the city. This twofold aspect interior\/exterior, the alternation between day and night, light and transparency leaves more to imagination than can actually be seen, and gives a refinement to the facade. The atmosphere created imparts both a traditional and a technological character to the building. This balance is also the key to the innovative anti-seismic system inspired by traditional Japanese temples that still stand despite frequent earthquakes. The backbone of this building is made up of a flexible steel structure, that is articulated at structurally strategic locations with visco-elastic dampers, from which cantilevered floors span to support the suspended glass-block facades. The entire building can move during earthquakes, according to pre-defined displacements, uniformly distributed over all the structural parts of the building. Each of the 13000 glass blocks which constitute the glass wall facade can absorb its share of the seismic movement, by moving up to 4 millimeters on each side. In this way, the building can tolerate the movement, and the integrity of the structure is guaranteed, but also that of the numerous networks that entice the building as well as its water and air tightness.<\/p>\n