AKEI TOY MUSEUM
Exploration of Form - Cut and Paste
Professor Richard Molina
Location:
Little Tokyo, Los Angeles
A museum has the potential to create connections within the community, rather than just provide entertainment for tourists. On the ground floor, their is a continuation of the public sidewalk, in which a cafe/restaurant can be open past normal gallery hours, becoming a part of the fabric of Little Tokyo. Various apertures act as viewpoints to the street and surrounding urban monuments.
The spaces created through articulated mass and plane offer an alternative to the box galleries, and creates a playful use of circulation. The architecture created pays homage to the upbeat and playful history of Japanese toymaking.
First, find some toys. Once the toys are acquired, all of the toys are documented in 3d software. From there proportions play a role in developing spatial composition. There is a bounding box which acts as a metaphysical boundary, in which the simplified geometries of the toys fill up said box. After process and iteration, the toys would be shifting and scaled, in which all excess portions of the toys that go beyond the initial boundary would by cut and pasted back into the boundary. Scale is then taken into consideration in order to provide
variation of space, in which there is moments of pinching vs. moments of expansion. The diversity of volumes are experienced differently as one circulates; in which the architectural language shifts from ceiling, to floor, to wall. The relationship of what is negative and what is positive creates variation of space and program. The developed geometries are used as light wells that connect spaces or skylights that filter diffused light into gallery spaces, which are expressed as sheer volume.
The primary vertical circulation is achieved by a thickened elevator core, which extends out to a gallery on every floor. Galleries are not conventional, and the curves and improper proportions create a relationship of the architecture to the art being displayed.
