An Endless Ribbon of Imagination

Celluloid Jam House near Yokohama, Japan, designed by Norisada Maeda Atelier of Tokyo, is based on a Moebius strip. The concept is that you could put a finger against the wall and follow that seamless surface continuously from interior to exterior to interior:

According to the designer:
“If you let your finger run across the complete surface of Celluloid Jam, no matter where you would start, you could:
a) go in one round from exterior to interior and back to your starting point without taking a break.
b) touch every point on the exterior as well as on the interior and returning back to your starting point without lifting your finger once.”

Maeda also points out that the building is no longer something that has been simply placed on the ground. It flows out of the ground and back into it.

To create this seamless surface, the wooden structure is revetted with an endless skin of FRP. Both conceptually and practically, FRP is the perfect material for realizing this design. The forming process of FRP lends itself to endless surfaces. Discreet panels can be cast in molds, but when they are joined together, the joints become as integral a part of the whole as the original casting, co-equal in material properties and strength, simply a continuation of the first casting process. An endless surface made with FRP does not succeed by artifice, but by complete honesty.

Because of the material’s high strength-to-weight ratio, it is also practical to make surfaces that are structurally supported by FRP, without other structural materials such as wood.

This points to the potential for architecture that is not based on, and not constrained by, the shapes of structural materials. The nature of the casting process lends itself to organic shapes. Posts and beams and masonry arches belong to a different world, a different frame of mind.

Film director Orson Welles once described the motion picture as “an endless ribbon of imagination.” In the aptly named Celluloid Jam House, architecture fulfills that description quite literally. If the material is endless, then the question becomes, how far can the architect’s imagination go.

Images via dezeen.com except as noted.