Curvaceous corrugated: Endo continues his exploration of bent corrugated metal in a domestic application

Architectural Review, The, August, 2004 by Veronica Pease

In the last few years, Shuhei Endo's experiments with galvanized corrugated steel have become world-renowned. He realized that the very cheap material, commonly used only in industrial and agricultural buildings, could have many more applications when its stiffness is increased by bending and curving it at right angles to the corrugations. Buildings like the bicycle sheds at Sakai railway station (AR April 1997) and the little building in the park in Hyogo Prefecture (AR October 1998) resulted, showing how corrugated metal could suddenly become an impressive substance, adopting new and dramatic forms that can enclose flowing silvery spaces.

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The new house and studio in a suburb of Biwa-cho in the Shiga Prefecture takes the development rather further than earlier experiments. It is fundamentally a single continuous strip of corrugated metal bent to enclose all the internal spaces of the building, and some of the external ones too. The wide metal ribbon slides and writhes sideways, east to west, in flattened coils starting with the garage, then defining a partly covered outside platform, thereafter soaring up to make a double-height gallery, descending to kiss a pool and finally returning to the ground to define the bedroom. The spaces it defines are pinned and connected by a long axial route that runs westward from the main entrance and garage through the double-height space, past a comparatively conventional terrace (which is defined to the west by the glazed wall of the poolside kitchen/dining room) and ending with the bedroom in the south-west corner of the site.

The metal ribbon is not pierced, so all daylight comes from glazing on the east and west flanks. By setting the entrance back from the access road on the east side of the site behind the garage and the metal terrace, the house is ensured a good deal of privacy, which is enhanced by the imperforate metal walls that prevent overlooking from close neighbours on the tight suburban sites to north and south. Ingenuity of composition and construction is undoubted, but the adaptation of what Endo calls 'Springtecture' to domestic architecture involves several problems: thermal and acoustic ones are obvious. And there are also difficulties in relating the basically orthogonal geometry of rooms to the writhings of the steel. Partitions are made in orthodox brick, and in glass framed in steel and timber. Particularly acute problems occur where walls meet the roof curves and special pieces have to be made to achieve the junctions.

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Yet such difficulties have proved soluble, if at a price. Springtecture is clearly coiling itself for further leaps.

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