AIG Building
Nagasaki, Japan
George Dasic Architects

Aluminum “waves” roll gently along the Nagasaki waterfront

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	Click here for slide show. Photo © Peter Cook

Located on New Dejima, a man-made island in Nagasaki Bay, this office building for insurance giant AIG complements several nearby urban regeneration projects including a new art museum and a public park. The site’s prominence posed a number of constraints: the building is visible from across the city, as well as the surrounding hills, so Nagasaki’s planning commission asked the designer, George Dasic Architects, to treat the roof as a fifth facade. Additionally, the city wanted a structure that would preserve water views from neighboring buildings. The region’s climate, with its hot summertime temperatures and intense sun exposure, also played an important role in the overall design concept.

Dasic aligned the slender rectangular volume along a north-south axis, positioning functions within it—and varying the curtainwall’s composition—to regulate indoor environmental quality and to integrate the building with its context. The first four floors contain open-plan workstations for 2,000 call center employees. The fifth level, by contrast, is smaller than the lower floors and contains meeting rooms and relaxation facilities; the remaining half of this level, to the north, is an open roof deck and gardens. Below it, the designers located an auditorium, which is open to the public, within a glazed cube that faces the art museum.

Glazed facades stretch along the east and west elevations, helping to dissolve the building’s mass and making it seem less like a wall that separates Nagasaki from its waterfront. Along the south elevation, where sun exposure is at its greatest, Dasic wrapped the structure in aluminum paneling pierced only by thin horizontal fenestration. The aluminum wrapper bends upward to form the roof; extruded nearly six feet from the building envelope, its deep eaves provide shade for the east and west elevations. The designers liken its curvy form—which ebbs as the building steps down to the north—to a set of silvery waves rolling in from Nagasaki Bay.

Formal name of project:
AIG Building

Location:
Nagasaki, Japan

Gross square footage:
23,300 sq. ft.

Owner:
American International Group KK

Architect:
George Dasic Architects
2-3-3 Nishihara
Shibuya-ku
Tokyo 151-0066, Japan
813-4565-5155 tel.
813-4565-5156 fax
www.dasic.com

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