avex artist academy aoyama studio | Daisuke Motogi

The most popular way to organize various items would be to "clear things away". For example, one can completely clear all items away from the desktop and hide them in closets or somewhere out of sight. In fact, there are also other ways to organize various items, such as to "place them on a grid", "line them up from smallest to largest", or "paint them all white". One might find alternative ways to organize things other than to "clear things away", if one takes a fresh look at the desktop and conceptualize how things should be organized in this particular context.
In this project of a dance studio run by Avex, we explored new ways of organizing things. Required core functions of the facility were two big and small dance studios, multi training area, voice training room, entrance hall and administration. The entrance hall is usually used as a place for communication between students and teachers, lounge, and administrative staff's work space. In addition, they intend to hold a few annual events and requested us to design a space which can be easily converted into an event space with a simple stage and seating area by changing the furniture layout. We were concerned that it would cause too much trouble to carry a movable stage and seating in and out of space for such limited occasions and that it would be also inefficient considering the floor area needed for storing these items. We came up with an idea of designing furniture pieces that can be left as they are in visually pleasing ways. Furniture pieces for the entrance hall have symbolic shapes and designed in such a way that they can be easily rearranged into different layouts when annual events are held. Here we are proposing a way to keep furniture pieces for events at the entrance hall as if displaying sculptures.
A figure 8-shaped sofa composed of macaroni-like pieces can be disassembled into separate pieces. It can be arranged in rows by disconnecting joints to use as audience seating at the time of events, or separated into individual pieces to use as one-person stools. Black colored L-shaped sofas are composed of smaller sofas bundled together using buckles and belts so that they can be disassembled and reconfigured when they have on-stage performances. Stacking chairs at meeting tables are colored in four gradient shades from grey to blue, which can be stacked to show the color gradation. High counters at the work space are mounted on casters and easily movable. These furniture pieces are designed based on the idea of "sculpturally storing" a sufficient number of furniture pieces required to hold events, while serving daily functions in the lounge.
The idea of "sculpturally storing" items are also applied to a partition serving as a "storage wall" for exercise balls in the training area, which would otherwise occupy a considerable floor area. Gold frames installed on the ceiling are used to hang suspension training equipment called TRX.