Hasta La Ideas

Here’s our second project this week by architects Kengo Kuma and Associates – a rural Italian villa converted into a showroom for ceramics company Casalgrande Padana.

The refurbished brick building provides an event space and a series of galleries for product displays.

Large white tiles placed onto pebble-covered floors mark pathways through the building, while some other tiles provide the treads for a staircase that leads to the two upper floors.

More tiles hang from the ceiling as decoration, plus some mounted onto bookshelves function as louvered lighting screens.

This week we also featured a Starbucks coffeeshop by Kengo Kuma and Associates – see it here.

Photography is by Marco Introini.

Here’s some more text from the architects:

Casalgrande, Reggio Emilia, Italy

We converted a private brick house in Reggio nell’Emilia’s grassland to a gallery run by Casalgrande Padana, a tile manufacturer. In its adjacent rotary, we had designed a monument called “Ceramic Cloud” using large-sized tiles.

The design theme for both the Old House and Ceramic House is lightness, thinness and strength of the tile. In 20th century, tile was used as a finishing material for concrete, a kind of cosmetics in architecture.

However, with the development of technology in recent years, they now produce denser, stronger, and larger tiles. Our objective was to create a light, “particled” interior space using those larger tiles.

The tiles are used mainly for treads of the stairs, bookshelves, tables and reflective plates to disseminate light. In each purpose, we pursued delicate details to emphasize the thinness and lightness of the tile.

Adding “lightness” of the tile onto the “weightiness” of the old brick house would be an interesting way to conserve historical architecture. This came from my notion that nature itself could be gradational, and I began to think how we could make things gradational.

If people’s activities also can be described gradational, so would be their houses, in various parameters.

Name of Project: Casalgrande old house
Location: Casalgrande, Reggio Emilia, Italy
Client: Casalgrande Padana
Type of Project: Renovation
Principal Use: Event hall, gallery
Design and Supervision: Kengo Kuma & Associates
Construction site supervision: Mauro Filippini (Casalgrande Padana)
Structure: Enrico Rombi, Alberto Zen (C.C. Prog.), Ejiri Structural Engineers
Number of Stories: 3 stories
Site area: 2540 sqm
Built area: 224 sqm
Total area: 470 sqm
Floor area for each story: GF：189 sqm, 1F：185 sqm, 2F：96 sqm
Height of stories: varies
Height of ceilings: varies
Maximum height: 11,000mm
Maximum eave height: 8,220mm
Structure: brick wall, Steel reinforcements
Utilities, Equipment: BACCARANI & TORRI
Construction: P.L.COSTRUZIONI
Electricity: BACCARANI & TORRI
Air condition and hygiene: PIFFERI IMPIANTI
Design Period：2009.11-2011.04
Construction Period：2010.04-2011.07

Traditional Japanese toys inspired this modular furniture by architects Kengo Kuma and Associates for the East Japan Project.

Twelve wooden sticks slot together without glue to form the units, which combine to make shelving or tables.

The six-sided units can be connected to one another from any edge.

The Chidori Furniture is named after Chidori toys, which are made from simple wooden components with unique joints – see another furniture design based on a Japanese puzzle here.

East Japan Project brings together designers and local craft makers in the region, offering support to communities devastated by the Tohoku earthquake.

The pieces are made by skilled carpenters in the Tohoku region, which has traditionally been associated with small-scale craft manufacturing.

You can see more stories on projects supporting those affected by the earthquake here.

Here is some more information from the East Japan Project:

East Japan Project (Ejp) is a collaboration between designers and traditional craft artisans from East Japan, with the purpose to propose The New Lifestyle as a concept design for post 3.11 Tohoku earthquake. The New Lifestyle refers to a way of life that is deeply rooted in a locality. Locality is another name for the system in which every aspect of a place – climate, culture, and people – is integrated in a natural way. This system however, disappeared in the urbanized society of the 20^th century with its pursuit for efficiency and convenience. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake in eastern Japan urges us to revisit this lost system and reevaluate its implications for a modern society.

The New Lifestyle attempts to reverse the course of the 20^th century and to revive the notion of place through the collaboration with craftsmen from the Tōhoku region in eastern Japan. – Yanagi Muneyoshi who lead the mingei (folk craft) movement of Japan in the late 1920s, once called the Tohoku region ‘the land of handcraft’.

In the framework of the East Japan Project (Ejp), to achieve this mode of New Lifestyle, the products are conceptualized as new types of daily tools with a deep appreciation of local craftsmanship and material and are to be part of a larger product portfolio called, ‘location’.

As one of Ejp Products, Chidori Furniture is a flexible system developed from the joint system of Chidori. Chidori, the name of an old Japanese toy from Hida Takayama, a small town in Japan, is originally an assembly of wood sticks with unique joints. Transformed from the traditional system of Chidori, 1 unit of Chidori Furniture consists of 12 timber sticks with different junction details. Each modular unit of Chidori Furniture can be connected to from all 6 sides making numerous combinations possible. Merely by twisting the sticks, without any nails or metal fittings, it shows a myriad of possibilities to become anything from a table to a shelf. The 2010 project GC Prostho Museum Research Center by Kengo Kuma and Associates is another project developed on basis of the Chidori system.

The junction details of the system require the high level of craftsmanship in Tohoku region to produce. One of the manufacturers, Fujisato Mokkoujo (Fujisato Woodshop) in Iwate Prefecture, is well- known for making Iwayado Tansu Drawers, which originated in the late 1700s. Their expertise in precise wood crafting and lacquer painting could produce multiple identical units of Chidori Furniture.

Chidori Furniture is currently exhibited in Bals Tokyo Nakameguro and Ginza stores and is also for sale.

Click above for larger image

Activities of EJP include:

1. Designers and craftsmen from East Japan will collaborate to develop items of daily use that provide a sustainable and minimal New Lifestyle.
2. Multiple corporations and groups will collaborate beyond the boundaries of a commercially driven enterprise and industry to develop a strong distribution and cooperative network.
3. EJP will conduct a field study and research of the unique traditional craft industry scattered in the regions of East Japan.
4. EJP will raise money from the profit of the EJP products sales to support the next generation of artisans, to acquire the skills of traditional crafts in East Japan.

See also:

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Whackpack Furniture by Brendan Magennis	Poles Apart by Adrian Bergman	Family Bench by Valentin Garal for Le Porc-Shop