Ishigami - KAIT Columns

Selected text from page 41 of the "Small Images" book by Junya Ishigami regarding the columns of his KAIT building:

"Though not immediately obvious to the eye, there are two different types of columns in the structure, the verticals - those bearing vertical forces, and the horizontals - those bearing horizontal forces. I wanted to make the columns as slender as possible, and assigning the forces was more effective than trying to make every column bear both."

"These columns are erected in roughly two different processes according to their type. For the verticals, the bases are joined to independent foundations, with beams being placed across the top ends. Pin joints hold the verticals to the beams. The detail of these pins would ultimately be concealed to match the welded detail of the horizontals top ends. For the horizontals, the fact that their own weight was acting on them as a vertical force seemed inefficient to begin with, when I wanted to make them slender. For this reason I decided to suspend the horizontals from the beams. After the verticals have been joined to the beams the horizontals are inserted with a crane from above the beams and fixed. In the basic approach for the structural planning in this project, the horizontals are designed not to bear snow loads and other vertical forces, so in the early stages I thought I would keep the horizontals' connection with the floor vertically loose. This would be to avoid buckling in the horizontals from snow and such...I looked to another solution. Before fixing the horizontals to the beams we preemptively loaded the top of the roof with weights equal to the snow loads, then fixed the columns. After the columns were fixed to the floor, the weights (=snow load) were removed from the roof, releasing the force. As a result the horizontals would get pulled upward and a tension would act on them...Not taking any compressive force, they would not bend [sic, aka buckle]. In this way both the verticals and horizontals were set up so that they appear simply imbedded in the concrete floor in the same manner. In the creation of an ambiguous space, this was a particularly important detail."