Design intentions
The BASE Minami-Aoyama is a three floor tenant complex which faces with the road on both north and south side of its site. From the facade on its north side to south side, the ground level goes up by 4 meters: the design incorporated that factor to let the building act as the fl ow line to connect both roads on its sides. Its gate-shaped frames line up in slightly shifted way like a series of modern art sculptures. Within these frames, printed glass screens overlap each other, creating unique scenes that changes as you walk in. The slits between gate-shaped frames filter sunlight just like trees and make interior space naturally rich in light and warm atmosphere. These slits run from glass wall to top-light, keeping each gate-shaped frame independent through the top-light. Each gate-shaped frame creates one unit of space composition. First and second fl oor have 18 shop space varied in its size from 4 to 10 square meters. Fashion related tenants, such as apparel boutique, jewelry shop, accessory shop, nail salon, design atelier are expected. On the third fl oor is a common area and meeting room, in addition to the largest tenant space for cafe or restaurant with terrace and roof balcony area where can be also used for tables. The First and Second Floor of BASE Minami- Aoyama consist of shop space and its showcase. Between shop space and showcase is aisle, which can be merged into shop space to create one unit with the opened folding glass door partitioning shop and aisle space.shop area transform its space with the user just as like in a bazaar and shop in town street. About one-third of the building is visible from Gaien Nishi Street, a well-known street in fashionable area of Tokyo. For appealing to people strolling along the street, each tenant can display its ads or inside view of its shop space on the seethrough LED vision screen inlaid in the structure as a part of design. Having slits with disjunct tubular structure is very important as the element of design and also as the structural theme of this project. Seven gate-shaped frames varying in its size act as thin rigid frames in span axis while they act as cantilever columns from the ground vertically. With each gate-shaped frame that functions as independent structure, it became possible to have shifted plane arrangements, creating slits that bring great sense of openness in this compact building.

Technical data
-Project Name: BASE MINAMI AOYAMA -Type of Building: Complex (Commercial,Cafe tenant space) -Address: 3-4-2 Minami Aoyama, Minato-ku Tokyo, Japan -Site Area: 164.60SQM -Building Area 262.71SQM -Structure: RC 3F

Project team
Architect:Ryuichi Sasaki + Kazuya Nishimura/SASAKI ARCHITECTURE,INC., Structural Design:Takushi Nakata/Rhythm Design Producer:Mineyuki Komura/Komura Agency,Co.LTD., Contractor:Shin Corporation