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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.
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Changle Lu spa, former 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.
October 31, 2011 · category blog · by admin
11月10日(木) 19時 － JA82連続シンポジウム「日本の都市空間2011 若手建築家による50の提案」 vol.5
(佐伯聡子 + K.M.Tan／KUU × 成瀬友梨＋猪熊純／成瀬・猪熊建築設計事務所)
11月11日(金) 18時半－ 日本建築学会関東支部 シンポジウム 次世代の表現と可能性5
(五十嵐太郎 × 平田晃久 × 豊田啓介 × 佐伯聡子）
11月14日(月) 18時半－ 明治大学理工学部建築学科 レクチャー
(佐伯聡子 + K.M.Tan／KUU)
10th November 2011, 1900-2100 at the Yoshioka Gallery ” the Japan Architect JA82 symposium ”
11th November 2011, 1830-2100 at AIJ Lecture Hall ” Expression and Possibility of Next Generation vol.5 ”
14th November 2011, 1830- at Architecture School of Meiji University
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