• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• no.36
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• pp.14-21
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• 2003

The Propose of this research was to consider how the New Media Architecture was applied to contemporary architecture according to the analysis of the design method process of Toyo Ito. Sendai Mediatheque by Toyo Ito stands as one of the most symbolic statement In New Media architecture. The four principal architectural elements of the Mediatheque are the digital image, the continuous space, the tube, and the skin facade. The digital image express forms of communication, person-to-person and person-to-thing, and they vary according to the media utilized on each level. The three skin elements of the Mediatheque are a double skin of MPG, skin of louvers, skin of fine-floor decking. The tubes act as columns while enveloping light, air, water, electricity the passage of people, as well as the means of transferring material. The thirteen tubes of different sizes prevent the erection of wall and suggest places instead of rooms. Instead of being limited to certain specified actions in clearly defined rooms, people are free to choose places for their actions in the continuous space.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.23-32
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• 2013

This study represents something in common and differences of organic characteristics between early modern architecture and contemporary architecture analysing F. L. Wright's Robie House and Toyo Ito's Sendai Mediatheque. A natural organic body cannot be separated from the natural environment, and each part of an architecture has each own property and forms a whole at the same time. That is a basic concept of organic architecture, and a framework for analysis is set up based on it. The followings are similarities and differences of organic concept and interpretation between Wright's Robie House and Ito's Sendai Mediatheque First, Wright' Robie house unites with the natural surrounding, using a physically close connection to the ground. In contract, Ito's Mediatheque shows characteristics of noncentural and fluidic space that are metaphorically reflecting tangible and intangible of factors in modern city, where there is an ambiguous physical boundary between architecture and urban environment. Next, floors, walls and ceilings of Wright's housing as for basic building blocks are physically separated and at the same time form formative unity from the point of view of a physical and structural organic body. And continuous flow of faces of separated walls form an organism united with the nature from a physical aspect. On the contrary to this, there is an no-boudary and floating organic architecture of integrated structure from ambiguous setting of relation between architecture and urban space in Ito's architecture. Especially, Mediatheque shows semantic integration of floating urban environmental factors through horizontal and vertical integration of horizontal slabs, vertical pipes, and skins. Last, horizontal and vertical factors of Wright' Housing is appreciated as an basic experienced structure in terms of spacial perception and fluidic inner spaces in Wright's housing is completed with a series of spatial experiences in a visual sense. On the other hand, no-boundary and floating space of Ito's architecture accept user's physical and virtual body. Especially, there is an integration transcending beyond time and space, accepting an imaginary body and events with the course of time at Ito's Mediatheque.