Gifu Kitagata Gardens
Location Kitagata, Japan | Client Gifu Prefectural Government | Size 46,877 square feet | Status Completed 2000 | Tags Mixed Use and Residential, Cultural and Art
MSP used strong site imagery and geometry to design a courtyard which unifies four separate housing blocks and gives the project a memorable identity.
Before its present use for housing, rice paddies existed on this site. The geometric pattern of raised dikes and sunken paddies provides the metaphor for creating a series of sunken garden ‘rooms.’ In the Willow Court, a sunken, flooded area with willow trees and wetland vegetation is accessed by a wooden boardwalk. In the Stone Garden, a circular fountain with stepping stones and rocks that spit water at irregular intervals creates a children’s play pool. Other garden rooms include the Cherry Forecourt, Iris Canal, Dance Floor, Children’s Playground with popular sandbox, Sports Court, Water Rill, and Bamboo Garden. Each room provides a different experience for the residents.
The Four Seasons Garden at the eastern end of the site is a series of four miniature gardens. They are enclosed by walls of small plexiglas panels in red, green, yellow, and blue. Reminiscent of Japanese lanterns, when they are illuminated from within at night, they evoke the four seasons. The red garden contains shrubs and wooden bird houses to symbolise spring. A tree and long grass, with fixings for a hammock, evoke summer. The yellow (fall) garden includes a yellow S-shaped love seat, and the blue winter garden has a shallow fountain made from the local ceramics for which Gifu is well known, set in a field of gravel surrounded by bamboo.
To reduce the impact of the parking spaces, which take up a significant percentage of the common space; the surface is made of attractive paving; evergreen hedges separate the spaces and hide them at ground level.
Christine Hawley (from the UK), Elizabeth Diller (from the USA) and Japanese architects Akiko Takahashi, Kazuyo Sejima, each designed one of the four apartment buildings, within the masterplan by architect Arata Isozaki, creating 430 residential units. Martha Schwartz was asked to design the courtyard between the four blocks to unify the distinct parts of the ‘feminism in housing design’ project. Working within the constraints of a tight budget (cut by a third during the course of the design), MSP created a series of outdoor rooms which delight and suprise.
The development is considered to be of an unusually high quality for Japanese social housing.
