Ecotone Hotel In Biwako by Ryuichi Ashizawa Architects

Interior Architecture and Design

The Setre Marina Hotel, designed by Ryuichi Ashizawa Architects, located in Moriyama City, Shiga Prefecture looking at the Lake Biwa, is not only in the center area of the community but also pretends to be its catalyzer for its creation.

The transition area between the lake and the land and urban area, one can find a variety of changes caused by the development of the 20th century where even the seawall has lost its original shape. In the land endorheic bodies of water left by the transformation of the lake links the city and the Biwa lake from its ancient Times to the present day, connecting people with nature.

The architects tried to as the project developed, to apply the concept of ecotone and blend the building within it. Created through rainwater, two small inner lakes surge like a site-specific biotope ecology in the east and west side, the intension, to create dwells that connect with the natural ecotone of the site, in the east side, planted woodlands nurture, in hopes that in the Future it would become a forest, the building in the meantime as interrupted gradations, between the natural and the structure that identifies the building as architecture, as an object.

The structure of the partition walls where built using the primitive and traditional process of plastering and soil. The outer wall of the north-south core, is made by mixing mortar and soil also called German wall which are common in modern architecture of the late Taisho, it’s the adopted method of Tsukeru on the wall, a Japanese technic that makes possible the appliance of roughed grain sized plaster or soil on the wall, roughing as much as possible, the grain size to make it look as much as possible like Doroyama (wet soil mountain).

The idea of a chapel associated with the Hotel. It is assumed a space filled with strong natural wind blowing from Lake Biwa. Therefore, the architects sought to make the project as an instrument played by the natural wind, a stringed instrument like the one present in Greek mythology, the god of the wind Aeolus blows the wind, we, the presence of the Aeolian harp that tuneful this time I know. This is an interpretation of the Aeolian Harp, a space that plays sound when the wind passes through.

Images © Kaori Ichikawa