Architecture acts in and upon the city through mediums of code-building codes, zoning codes, civil codes, social codes, environmental codes, representational codes. The design of architecture in the city is less the design of objects than it is the configuration of multiple and differentiated codes into new sequences and relations.
A code is a systematic arrangement of relationships that specifies the legitimate and illegitimate functions of the objects, images, behaviors, or processes that are contained within its purview. Codes may be statutory or customary; preventative or exhortatory; formal or informal; artificial or biological. Codes may be expressed textually or graphically or with gestures, colors, or sounds.
The contemporary city is a dense mesh of codes, overlapping one another in complementary and contradictory ways. To undertake an act of design in the city is to enter into this frantic dialogue of codes. For whether that act of design begins from the perspective of economics and finance, or politics and communities, or forms and images, the codes exist in advance, as property rights, real estate pro forma, mass transit capacities, closing times, marriage laws, traffic signals, or historic overlay districts. In addition, even as it becomes the corollary of these external codes, architecture carries along its own embedded codes-conventions that regulate forms and representations, parametric scripts that define the conditional logics of design, standards at govern the behavior of architects or the sequences of fabrications.
Unlike a conventional design method, this project required to encode and test whether this intended code works properly or not. To encode the specific code, we researched Tokyo city. Indeed, Tokyo has evolved based on train transportation system unlike other cities, so Tokyo has a diversified local culture at every station. We realized that even Tokyo has a very dense populated condition, the city still has a form of livable city. So, the project’s aim is to make a low rise, highly dense city.