blog
February 2, 2012 · category blog · by km
Will the printed book go the way of the dodo? Will all of us be condemned to swipe away at e-pages soon? Surely not. Not if they make them like my copy of Francois Jullien’s The Silent Transformations published exquisitely by Seagull Books, Calcutta.
The beautiful cover beguiles. The well-chosen typeface crisp. Each page with ample borders soothes the eye. The just so subtly translucent paper, a wonder to the touch.
The words of Jullien, comparing ‘divergences’ in Western and Chinese ways of thinking about time and processes of change, further captivate when strung along long meandering sentences that amble on and on with small rises and falls, slow arcing turns and bends, like its subject matter — the cumulative changes that happen through time, what he names ’silent transformations’:
“As for the Sage (or the Prince), far from claiming to give lessons or impose orders, through direct signs, or wanting to impress others through miracles and exploits, he will be content with gradually ‘transforming’ the behaviour of those around him in silence: indeed, as the days go by, just the example of his conduct in itself extends from him and influences; due to this fact alone and through the impact it makes, it imperceptibly impregnates and modifies behaviour — it is all that is needed in order to educate.”
___________________
For our hawkers’ centre project in Singapore with LingHao Architects, rain trees will be planted around the large pavilions. The rain trees will grow steadily over time (20, 30 years) to mature into large trees with 30m diameter dome-shaped canopies. These canopies extend the feeling of the pavilions into the surroundings. You eat under shade, both man-made and natural in those tropical conditions.
December 22, 2011 · category blog · by km
In this study, we try to imagine how to make the former French Concession in Shanghai retain its relevance in an economically optimistic period where there is great pressure to increase the density of old neighbourhoods, turning them invariably into more economically valuable high-rise condominiums, high-rise office towers, and bulky shopping centres.
Instead of existing models of development for the newly formed middle and rich classes, which entail clearing of old built fabric, subsequently amalgamating these lots into large comprehensive urban sites to be sold to private developers to build integrated living, commercial, entertainment, office spaces – we propose a partial insertion of new low-rise high density model with different functions layered like ribbons or contours that weave flexibly around existing buildings.
Instead of being too nostalgic about preserving all things old, we carefully select what to keep and what to replace with the intention to form new relationships between what is there and what is to be added: new intimate paths, new openness, new integrated-ness, new disruptions, new complementaries and new contrasts.
Each layer could be for residential, commercial uses or as green strips for relaxation. Each layer is only 4m deep, such that one passes quickly walking from one layer to the next. From small eateries to cozy shops to intimate green lanes to residences, in a short time, one passes through a succession of differences, a bodily traversing of concrete urban richness.
——-
Changle Lu spa, French Concession
(photo: Jeremy San)
December 11, 2011 · category blog · by km
Nagakin capsule: from the book;
and the real thing, as memento, outside the Mori Art Museum.
In this comprehensive Metabolists exhibition at the Mori Art Museum, the many beautiful models, drawings and graphic works of the projects all add up to tell a rich story of that group of Japanese architects, loosely banded, collaborating in various smaller alliances, not always harmonious, but each with their own particular interests. This exhibition gave a more revealing and much truer sense of what went on during that period rather than the simple formulations available to the international reader through Western pubications where Metabolism often end up in history classes as a token example of “non-Western” contemporary architecture.
From the exhibition, one can tell why the West were fascinated with the Japanese Metabolists. The West quite easily understood the formal manipulations of the architecture presented to them. It was all about formal rules of geometry – universal, abstract; the clarity of a geometrical architectural language that they were also experimenting with at that time. Reyner Banham’s book Megastructures, surveyed the cross-influences from various countries, including Japan, at that time of just such formal ideas, usually involving some form of super structure, with adhesions of changeable cell-like parts. It was also obvious that the Japanese were highly influenced by such images circulating then.
But what the West did not understand or were not so interested in was the Metabolists’ idea of metabolism not as a metaphor to make more architecture or to organise chaotic growth, but in architecture that can approximate a biological organism, including decay. It wasn’t all about architecture as buildings and shapes. This was much harder to explicate, but it’s all there, in some of more “experimental” graphical images and texts of some members of this “group.”
This, together with Koolhaas’ and HUO’s Project Japan re-address what the Metabolists were really about.
November 21, 2011 · category blog · by km
Anyone can walk in from the street to have a coffee or buy things and you can easily feel the street from inside.
Walking up between floors, your body twists and turns and see other bits of the surrounding.
Sometimes the next building comes right up close. Even in the escape stairs, there are windows into other people working.
Curved glass captures surroundings more. Chained-link fence veils your view. Sejima’s architecture is not hung up about “transparency” or the “ephemeral” and certainly not so “innocent” about what architecture can do.
November 18, 2011 · category blog · by km
We were taken on a tour around Aoki Jun’s office after spending time to engage us with a discussion about our work. There were many study models of different scales, 1:1 drawings, bits and pieces of things they made. Some staff were working on a large model to study the “beauty of roughness” in a new sports hall. He knew exactly where things were, casually pulling out models to talk through some ideas or else showing odds and ends collected through his years of interest in making.
next »
