EDGE HOUSE BY NORIYOSHI MORIMURA

 

The Edge House sits in the Nishinomiya area of Hyogo. From this point the site commands a panoramic view from Kobe port all the way to the Osaka bay area.

The client requested a space in the midst of nature to offer refuge from a hectic work schedule.

The result is an amazing design concept that utilizes the natural slope of the mountainside to create the appearance of a distinct two story home: from the exterior, concrete slabs “fold” onto themselves in the shape of an S, the interior however, reveals an open, connected space that follows the S-curve into a unique split-level design.

The living room, dining room, bedroom, and kitchen are not confined or hampered by walls.

Like nature rather, spaces flow seamlessly through the length of the building, integrating simplicity and comfort.

 

Location: Nishinomiya, Hyogo, Japan
Architect: Noriyoshi Morimura Architects & Associates
Site Area: 637.26 m²
Building Area: 94.39 m²
Year: 2008

 

 

Source: Simbiosisnews

RIVERSIDE MUSEUM BY ZAHA HADID

There is a zone of Glasgow so studded with culture and architecture, so richly fertilised with public investment, while also blessed by nature with the noble breadth of the Clyde, that it ought to be a wonder of the world. 

This zone, once full of shipyards, now contains the work of two Pritzker prize winners – Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid – and a probable Pritzker-winner-in-waiting, David Chipperfield.

Over the last 12 years, it has acquired a convention centre, two museums and the headquarters of BBC Scotland, a swoopy new bridge and a jaunty observation mast by the not-half-bad architect Richard Horden. 

But no one standing here could be exhilarated, moved or transformed by what they see. No one would say: "This is a nice place." It is like an underplanned business estate, a landscape of things set in car parks, no matter what the architectural merit of each thing might be. In the gaps between the monuments and the car parks are inserted expedient slabs of commerce or the perfunctory ingratiation of exploitative blocks of flats. There is no coherence, no positive quality to the sum of the parts or to the combinations of one with another. This is not to question the achievement of the Riverside Museum of Transport and Travel , designed by Zaha Hadid Architects , or the pleasure to be had from its wonderful models of battleships and liners, its trams, cars, motorcycles and its giant steam locomotive built in Glasgow for South African Railways and now returned to its native city. 

 

 

It is one of Hadid's most direct buildings, essentially a big, column-free shed mutated in two ways. First, its roof line is a jagged range of peaks and troughs, like Alps or gables abstracted to a cartoon; second, the shed is bent twice in plan, so that it takes the form of Z-shaped tube, whose end cannot be seen from the beginning. The profile of the cartoon Alps/gables is extruded through the length of the Z, as if squeezed from a gothic tube of toothpaste. 

Its underside forms the pleated ceiling of the shed, with strong horizontal lines leading you through the space. There are big, glass walls at each end: one is the entrance, the other frames a view of the tall ship Glenlee, moored outside. The museum is mostly about interior. Outside, it is, typologically, a supermarket, being a big thing in a car park seeking to attract you in. There are signs that tell you that this is a more serious piece of architecture than most supermarkets, such as its air of intent and the degree of care in shaping zinc panels around the complex external shape, but, like a retail shed, it does not give much to its surroundings. Great, grey and curving, it has enigma and majesty, but not friendliness. The landscaping that clings to its flanks currently looks forlorn, although may appear less so once the trees have grown a bit. To be inward-looking might be necessary, given the wilderness in which the museum stands. At a distance is a huddle of credit-crunched flats, and between them and the museum some scrub awaiting transformation into a shopping development. In the other direction, across more empty space, are the Foster and Chipperfield buildings. All the emptiness is to be developed by the Peel Group, which recently featured on these pages as the builders of the BBC's new offices in Salford . It is possible that it will do a better job than was done around the Foster conference centre, but there is not yet concrete evidence that it will. 

text: Rowan Moore

photo: Zaha Hadid Architects

HEATHERWICK STUDIO

Thomas Heatherwick (born 17 February 1970)

Thomas Heatherwick tends to defy categorisation as a designer, as do his works. His UK Pavilion for this year's Shanghai Expo, the truly remarkable Seed Cathedral (see Best New Public Building), melds art and architecture. His 'Spun' chair -- originally created in copper and steel for Haunch of Venison using a metal spinning process that's traditionally applied to drum-making, and then 'respun' in a rippled, moulded plastic version for Magis -- looks more like an art installation than a chair. And his 'Extrusions' collection of aluminium benches, using aeronautical technology, is pure sculpture. Heatherwick Studio 'exists to make extraordinary projects happen'.

"In the studio for the last 16 ½ years we've been trying to develop rather than a style, a system for thinking and developing new ideas. It's less about singular moments of inspiration and me leaping out of a bath and sketching something--rather, I rely on a team of people where we work together and have a way that we focus our thought on a design issue or problem."

2005 ROLLING BRIDGE, LONDON

The studio Heatherwick studio was commissioned to design a pedestrian bridge to span an inlet of the Grand Union Canal at Paddington Basin, London, and provide an access route for workers and residents.

Crucially, the bridge needed to open to allow access for the boat moored in the inlet.

The aim was to make the movement the extraordinary aspect of the bridge. A common approach to designing opening bridges is to have a single rigid element that fractures and lifts out of the way.

Rolling Bridge opens by slowly and smoothly curling until it transforms from a conventional, straight bridge, into a circular sculpture which sits on the bank of the canal.

The structure opens using a series of hydraulic rams integrated into the balustrade.

As it curls, each of its eight segments simultaneously lifts, causing it to roll until the two ends touch and form a circle. The bridge can be stopped at any point along its journey.

2005-07 BOILER SUIT, GUY’S HOSPITAL, LONDON

Heatherwick Studio was invited to draw up a masterplan for the entrances and approaches to Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital.

Drip-fed funding over recent decades has mitigated against the strategic development of the site, resulting in a hospital environment that at times feels fragmented and unwelcoming.

The new plan creates a more coherent system of vehicle and pedestrian access in and around the hospital.

The studio also addressed the hospital’s boiler house – a building adjacent to the entrance, identified by hospital staff as an eyesore.

By creating a new facade for the building, the boiler house becomes both a signpost for the hospital main entrance and a focal point for the site – visible fom pedestrian and vehicle approach routes, making the site as a whole more coherent and easier to navigate.

Much of the scheme consists of functional, pragmatic moves, which create space for a focal point, in this instance provided by Boiler Suit – a bespoke tiled cladding system wrapping around the boiler house.

Boiler Suit is fabricated from high grade stainless steel frames, with braid woven through as the “warp”. The 108 tiles are geometrically identical, with 17 variants required to accommodate specific junctions.

The tiles are a secondary façade system that is demountable and allows the machinery to vent through, whilst framed reveals shade the large windows on the south façade to reduce solar gain.

2007 EAST BEACH CAFÉ, LITTLEHAMPTON

Heatherwick Studio was commissioned to design a café building to replace a seafront kiosk in Littlehampton on England’s south coast.

With the post-war rise in cheap package holidays having deprived the English seaside town of investment and downgraded many of them to cheap clichés, the studio’s client saw an opportunity to change this.

Mother and daughter team Jane Wood and Sophie Murray, both residents of Littlehampton, were keen to do something different that might begin to re-establish the importance of the English seaside town.

The studio saw the challenge as responding to the constraints of the narrow site by producing a long, thin building without flat, two-dimensional façades.

The envelope is sliced diagonally into strips which wrap up and over the building, creating a layered protective shell, open to the seafront.

The elevation looking onto the sea is fully glazed, protected at night by roller shutters concealed within the building’s geometry, the 30 centimetre width of the ribbons being the dimension of a shutter mechanism.

In contrast to the conventional white-washed seaside aesthetic, the building is raw and weathered, with the structural steel shell protected by a coating that permits rust-like patination to develop without affecting structural performance.

A kiosk and cafeteria by day and a restaurant in the evening, the East Beach Cafe seats sixty.

2007-10 UK PAVILION, SHANGHAI EXPO

The studio’s design has three main aims: the first is to be a pavilion whose architecture is a direct manifestation of the content it exhibits; the second is to provide significant public open space in which visitors can relax; the third is to find a simple idea that is strong enough to stand out amidst the busy-ness of the hundreds of competing pavilions.

These aims are captured in two interlinked and experiential elements based around the subject of nature and cities – the Seed Cathedral, and a multi-layered landscape treatment of the 6,000sqm site.

The Seed Cathedral is a platform to show the work of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and their Millennium Seedbank.

In the circulation zone under the landscape that surrounds the Seed Cathedral a series of installations explore in more detail the particularity of nature and UK cities.

The Seed Cathedral is a 20-metre high building, constructed from 60,000 transparent 7.5-metre long optical strands, each of which has embedded within its tip a seed.

The interior is silent and illuminated only by the daylight that has filtered past each seed through each optical hair.

2010 SPUN CHAIR

produced for London gallery Haunch of Venison, shaped like a spinning top, the chair is made of spun steel and copper.

You can easily change the direction you are facing by rotating the chair on its axis. The chair looks unstable but it’s actually is as stable as a normal chair.

The design is very simple and can be used in both indoor and outdoor.

ALINGHI RESIDENCE, GROSE BRADLEY BNV

Australian studio Grose Bradley BNV has designed the Alinghi Residence in collaboration with LGI Architects.

Completed in 2005, this contemporary beach retreat is located in Rocky Point, a remote rocky inlet approximately about 3 miles south of Agnes Water, an increasingly popular tourist town on the coast of Queensland, Australia.

 

 

 

 

Alinghi Residence by Grose Bradley BNV: “Alinghi has been designed to create a place of contemplation and retreat nestled on the edge of a high sand dune and rocky escarpment facing northeast across the South Pacific. The natural beauty of this place provided the basis of the design – sitting directly to the northeast of the house is Rocky Point, a richly textured and coloured “rocky point`. The stratified rock layers of the point reveal themselves as platforms finding their expression as horizontal incisions into the sandy bay. The rich colours of the rocks contrast with the flat white sand and to the sea, establishing a visual language at once rooted to the earth and at once ephemeral and light like the passing seabirds. Standing on the travertine platform of Alinghi the same sensation of contrast is evident – the flat and solid rock underfoot conceptually lodges itself deeply into the sand dune creating a sense of contrast between the “rock` of the house platforms and the sparkling water of the surrounding reflection ponds. The windswept coastal scrub with its fine detail and expressive chaos gives backdrop to the simple forms of the house. Two pavilions form the accommodation linked by a concrete covered way – the concrete again reflecting the strong rootedness of the building into the landscape. The buildings are a combination of bagged concrete block and timber battens in colours and textures that will develop the patina of the landscape – the heavy masonry base and the light timber frames abstracting the relationship between the ancient rocks at the sea edge and the gnarled and twisted Australian coastal vegetation. The main pavilion is designed with large living spaces opening onto a variety of semi-enclosed areas providing retreat from the wind or for basking in the Queensland sun – the second is a retreat pavilion with bedroom and private study, with both buildings adjacent to the travertine platform on the north and south and to the west the open concrete walkway framing the bush. In time the landscape and buildings will merge to provide a retreat and sanctuary at one with the timelessness of this rugged and quintessentially Australian coastal landscape.”

Photos by: John Gollings
Source: OpenBuilding