プロジェクトの始まりは、日本橋で育ったから最後はこの地に戻りたい、という施主の一言。日本橋三越から徒歩5分という距離にあり、地上階はギャラリー、中間階はオフィス、上階に住居が成立する絶妙の立地に建っている。外観は、古き良き東京の中心にあっても、小粒で輝く存在となる願いを込めて、ベースに歌川広重作・「大はしあたけの夕立」に見られる雨の表現をイメージし、その上に等比数列からなる稲光りのような強いリズムを重ねた。プロジェクトの最後は、ビルの名称を考えること。その名は、土地名と施主名よりイニシャルをもらい、住所表記を全て足したスーパー素数を合わせた「N 11」。
　　久々のビル案件。上に積み重ねていく高層建築は、全てある種の「欲」を表現していると思う。港区と中央区にしか高層建築を設計したことがないが、それぞれ土地の気風は違えど、東京にあればやはり銀と金が似合う。こういうプロジェクトは、ほぼ外観一発勝負だと思うが、高層建築が潜在的に持っている欲を、品よく、迫力や凄みに変わるよう表現していくのは楽しい。けど、この仕事で一番嬉しかったのは優秀な元スタッフと共同作業ができたこと。

＊2025年1月24日、本プロジェクトを当時の原文のまま再掲載

The start of this project was a single word by the client, “I would like to come back to my birthplace, Nihonbashi as my final place”. The site is fantastic location with just five minutes walk distance from Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi department main store. The proposed building is with a gallery space on the ground floor, office spaces in the middle floors and the residence floors on the top. The building façade was designed with the pattern of rain fall and bolt of lightnings for expressing a tiny shining jewel in the traditional district in Tokyo. The rain fall pattern comes from the Japanese classic woodblock print, UKIYO-E, “Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake” by Hiroshige Utagawa and the bolt of lightnings strong pattern from the geometrical series were overlaid on. The last piece of the project was to name the building. The name of this building is “N11”, N comes from the initial of site and of client name and 11, the super prime number, was summed up by the address number of the site.
　　It has been a while for us to work on the building type projects. I think that the high-rise buildings, stacking floors on the tops, express the entire desire of humankind. Although, we have only experiences of the building type projects in the Minato and Chou wards with slightly different characteristic backgrounds, I believe that the gold and silver colours would suit the city of Tokyo. On this type of project, the façade design is the key and main factor. It, however, was fan experience to translate the potential desire of skyscraper into elegance, overwhelming and impression. Besides, the most remarkable things for me on this project was to collaborate with the excellent former staff of my practice.