WINDOW RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Nestled within a coastal pine grove, this building, characterized by its four tower-like cores, was built at the height of the Metabolist movement to commemorate the writer Kojiro Serizawa. A fixed-glass window consisting of approximately 150-millimeter-wide slits forms a Latin cross on the northern wall of the core that houses a stairwell. Measuring roughly 11 meters in height, the window softly illuminates the entire stairwell. The central second-story gallery, which spans between the cores, features full-height, wall-to-wall openings at each tip of its cruciform plan, allowing unobstructed sightlines in all four directions. Each of these openings is fitted with a pair of vertical ventilation windows that flank a square fixed window, whose bottom frame is positioned so that it visually merges with the floor.