Hasta La Ideas

News: here are the first images of this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, which was unveiled in London this morning (+ slideshow).

The cloud-like structure on the lawn outside the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens is made from a white lattice of steel poles.

The grid varies in density, framing or obscuring the surrounding park by different degrees as visitors move around it. Circles of transparent polycarbonate amongst the poles afford shelter from the rain but also create a layer that reflects sunlight from within.

“I tried to create something – of course really artificial – but nicely melding together with these surroundings, to create a nice mixture of nature and architecture,” said Sou Fujimoto at the press conference this morning.

“This grid is really artificial, sharp, transparent order, but the whole atmosphere made by grids is more blurring and ambiguous, like trees or a forest or clouds. So we can have the beautiful duality of the artificial order and natural order,” he added.

The lattice parts in the middle to house seating for a cafe. It will open to the public on Saturday and remain in place until 20 October.

The annual unpaid Serpentine Gallery Pavilion commission is one of the most highly sought-after small projects in world architecture and goes to a major architect who hasn’t yet built in the UK.

Last year’s pavilion was a cork-lined archaeological dig created by Herzog & de Meuron with Ai Weiwei. Dezeen filmed interviews with Herzog & de Meuron at the opening, where Jacques Herzog told us how they sidestepped the regulations to be allowed to participate and Pierre de Meuron explained how cork was used to appeal to “all the senses, not just your eyes”.

In 2011 it was a walled garden by Peter Zumthor, who told us at the opening: “I’m a passionate architect… I do not work for money”. Watch that movie here.

Past projects by Sou Fujimoto include a house that has hardly any walls, another with three layers of windows and a library with shelves on the exterior. See our slideshow of Sou Fujimoto’s key projects or check out all our stories about his work.

See all our stories about the Serpentine Gallery Pavilions »
See more architecture by Sou Fujimoto »

Here’s some more information from the Serpentine Gallery:

The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013 is designed by multi award-winning Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto. He is the thirteenth and, at 41, the youngest architect to accept the invitation to design a temporary structure for the Serpentine Gallery. The most ambitious architectural programme of its kind worldwide, the Serpentine’s annual Pavilion commission is one of the most anticipated events on the cultural calendar. Past Pavilions have included designs by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei (2012), Frank Gehry (2008), Oscar Niemeyer (2003) and Zaha Hadid, who designed the inaugural structure in 2000.

Widely acknowledged as one of the most important architects coming to prominence worldwide, Sou Fujimoto is the leading light of an exciting generation of architects who are re-inventing our relationship with the built environment. Inspired by organic structures, such as the forest,Fujimoto’s signature buildings inhabit a space between nature and artificiality.

Fujimoto has completed the majority of his buildings in Japan, with commissions ranging from the domestic, such as Final Wooden House, T House and House N, to the institutional, such as the Musashino Art Museum and Library at Musashino Art University.

Occupying some 357 square-metres of lawn in front of the Serpentine Gallery, Sou Fujimoto’s delicate, latticed structure of 20mm steel poles has a lightweight and semi-transparent appearance that allows it to blend, cloud-like, into the landscape against the classical backdrop of the Gallery’s colonnaded East wing. Designed as a flexible, multi-purpose social space – with a café run for the first time by Fortnum and Mason inside – visitors will be encouraged to enter and interact with the Pavilion in different ways throughout its four-month tenure in London’s Kensington Gardens.

Fujimoto is the third Japanese architect to accept the invitation to design the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, following Pritzker Prize winners Toyo Ito in 2002 and Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA in 2009.

AECOM have provided engineering and technical design services for the Pavilion for 2013. David Glover, AECOM’s global chief executive for building engineering, has worked on the designs of many previous Pavilions.

Sponsored by: HP
With: Hiscox
Advisors: AECOM
Platinum Sponsors: Rise, Viabizzuno progettiamo la luce

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by Sou Fujimoto appeared first on Dezeen.

Athens studio Tense Architecture Network has completed a concrete house that staggers down a hillside in rural Greece (+ slideshow).

Residence in Kallitechnoupolis is a three-storey building that begins near the top of the slope. As it descends, the building widens to create tiered balconies facing out across the landscape.

Tense Architecture Network describes the structure as a protective shell that shields the house from its neighbours and concentrates views in only one direction.

“The inclined prism of the shell follows the natural inclination and descends towards the ground via the intensely oblique cut of its eastern front,” says the studio.

The base of the building cantilevers outwards, making room for a swimming pool on the lowest level, plus an outdoor staircase climbs down one of the side walls to meet a terrace positioned halfway down.

The architects used concrete for the entire structure, adding a dark tint to the exterior walls so that they contrast with the pale grey interior surfaces.

“Earthly dark at the outside, lighter in the inside, its colouring is aiming at the maximum possible tension of the shell’s introvertedness,” say the architects.

Living and dining rooms can be found on the two upper floors, while bedrooms are located on the bottom floor around a series of curved partitions.

Tense Architecture Network have completed several residential projects recently, including an angular house with a partially submerged body and a house with a boxy concrete upper floor.

See more architecture by Tense Architecture Network »
See more architecture in Greece »

Photography is by Filippo Poli.

Here’s a project description from Tense Architecture Network:

Residence in Kallitechnoupolis

The residence’s view is a slope: a naked attic slope. The site is significantly inclined and is accessed only through its narrow upper side. The declivity of the site faces an equally slanted hill –the predominant point of visual reference. As the residence neighbours with two extrovert residences on both sides, it realises enclosure, concentration of the view and an introvert escalating development of its open spaces towards the east. The opposing landscape of the hill is perceived from a distance.

The inclined prism of the shell follows the natural inclination and descends towards the ground via the intensely oblique cut of its eastern front. The cut opens the residence to the opposed microcosmos: the air, the light, the barberries, the horizontal ridge, the long lonely railing of the opposite side. A swimming pool is comprised in the shell’s lowest point, partly in cantilever. At the level of the access an elongated excision of the prism allows for a walled yet unroofed outdoor space that eventually concludes to the open eastern front and the view.

The exterior cortex is constructed by exposed reinforced concrete: the shell is two-coloured. Earthly dark at the outside, lighter in the inside, its colouring is aiming at the maximum possible tension of the shell’s introvertness. The geometric austerity of the prism is violently ruptured in three areas: the shell is ultimately found broken, the rupture of its boundaries is performed from within, the remote nature is allowed in. Yet, only as Actio in Distans: only as view.

Project Team: Tilemachos Andrianopoulos, Kostas Mavros, Nestoras Kanellos
Structural design: Athanasios Kontizas

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by Tense Architecture Network appeared first on Dezeen.

This house in western England by London studio Paul Archer Design features a mirrored facade that slides across to cover the windows (+ slideshow).

Surrounded by gardens, Green Orchard house is designed to camouflage with the landscape, so Paul Archer added huge panels of polished aluminium to the walls. “The outer reflective panels will pick up the colours of the landscape, the idea being to make the structure almost invisible,” he says.

The panels are well insulated and connected to a motorised system, so that the client – Paul Archer’s mother – can transform the building into a thermally sealed box with relative ease.

The house has two storeys, including one that is sunken into the inclining landscape. The living room, dining room and kitchen occupy an L-shaped space on the ground floor and lead out to terraces on both the south-west and north-east elevations, designed to catch the sun at different points of the day.

The master bedroom is also on this floor, while three extra sleeping rooms are located on the sunken lower level. Part of this floor emerges from the ground, allowing enough space for a few high-level windows.

A wood-burning stove is positioned at the centre of the plan and provides all of the house’s heating. A 93-metre well supplies fresh water, which can be heated via thermal solar panels on the roof.

“Whilst unashamedly contemporary in its design, Green Orchard is a sensitive response to its location, integrating appropriate materials and functional details to create an innovative and tangible solution to current environmental issues,” says Archer.

Several buildings with mirrored walls have cropped on Dezeen recently. Others include an Australian visitor centre for botanic gardens and a six-sided art museum in Ohio.

See more mirrored buildings »
See more houses in the UK »

Photograph is by Will Pryce, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s the full project statement from Paul Archer:

Green Orchard: A Zero Carbon House
Compton Greenfield, South Gloucestershire, UK

Green Orchard is a new 200 sq m carbon-neutral house designed by Paul Archer Design. Set within 2,675 sq m of landscaped gardens in the green belt of South Gloucestershire, the house benefits from spectacular views over the Severn Estuary.

Having earned a reputation for highly contemporary residential extensions and renovations predominantly in an urban setting, Green Orchard is the practice’s first new-build detached single-family dwelling commission. The project brief called for a Californian case study house with green credentials, which would permit seamless outdoor/indoor living whilst delivering a zero carbon agenda.

The house replaces a dilapidated single-storey dwelling with a contemporary low-rise four-bedroom home. Set within landscaped gardens without the constraints imposed upon typical urban projects, Green Orchard is designed in the round, with all four elevations taking advantage of views out and access to the garden. Maximising its rural setting, the house adopts the methodology of a passivhaus typology without the single orientation.

The main living spaces and master bedroom are located on the ground floor with direct access to the garden. An excavated sunken level creates a second floor for additional sleeping accommodation, ensuring a low-rise profile that embraces the natural topography of the site.

The house incorporates four bedrooms (two of which have en-suite facilities), a main bathroom, a workshop space, kitchen, dining and living area. All living spaces are open-plan with a wood burning stove at the heart of the plan and plant room located on the floor below, to give a greater sense of openness and maximise views and sunlight. Two external terraces connect to the garden and are orientated to catch the sun at different times of the day.

The outer skin of the building is made of bespoke hand-crafted full-height panels, which are electronically motorised to slide open fully. The panels are highly insulated and allow the occupants to control and vary the thermal performance of the house depending on the time of the day and year. The panels are constructed of locally sourced timber and clad with mirrored aluminium to reflect the landscape and camouflage the structure in its surroundings.

The house and landscape have been designed with specific intention to reduce the consumption and requirement for energy: a wood-burning Stuv stove is the only heat source; water is supplied by a 93 metre bore hole; thermal solar panels on the roof yield heating for 80% of the house’s water; and photovoltaics provide all electric use when taken over the yearly cycle. A green roof embeds the property into the landscape, filtering out pollutants from the surrounding air and acts as an effective active insulation. It keeps the building cool in summer and warm in winter, reducing the requirement for excessive energy production.

Set in gardens cultivated by the client, Green Orchard is screened from its neighbouring properties and road frontage. A sunken driveway and raised garden reduces the visual impact of the house and planting provides a tranquil setting from which to enjoy the countryside views.

Green Orchard is the second house the practice has designed for the same client, practice director Paul Archer’s mother and her husband. The plan allows for easy navigation and access to all areas whilst generous room sizes and a flowing internal layout ensures that manoeuvrability is unhindered, an essential consideration when designing for a client in their later years.

An innovative house has been achieved on a modest budget by designing the entire house to accommodate modular off-the-shelf interior units. The client has taken a hands-on approach to deliver high quality finishes by contributing their own expertise, from the design and planting of the garden to the carpentry of the exterior sliding panels and manufacture of the interior glass balustrades.

Whilst unashamedly contemporary in its design, harnessing the latest in green technology, Green Orchard is a sensitive response to its location, integrating appropriate materials and functional details to create an innovative and tangible solution to current environmental issues, presenting a way forward in designing for a sustainable future.

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Paul Archer Design appeared first on Dezeen.

Climbing plants and vines shoot up over a gridded facade of metal beams and panels at this house in Binh Duong Province by Vietnamese architects a21studio (+ slideshow).

Constructed on a limited budget, the house was designed to both “look green” and fit in with its neighbours. The architects at a21studio used steel beams to construct a basic framework, then clad the exterior with lightweight mesh and corrugated panels, and encouraged plants to grow up around it.

A see-through outer facade functions as a boundary fence. Beyond it, the house has no walls on the front or rear of its ground floor, revealing a simple living room and kitchen with a small garden beyond.

Colourful ceramic tiles cover every inch of the floor and also extend out beyond the shelter of the roof. A kitchen counter runs longways through the room and more tiles clad its sides and surfaces.

A staircase leading up to the two first-floor bedrooms is made from a single sheet of folded metal and uses reinforcing rods as a banister.

To furnish the house, the architects used reclaimed items that include a set of wooden chairs.

“By making the most of abandoned items and using spaces cleverly, people can easily have a comfortable house that is fulfilled by nature and flexible for future needs,” say the architects.

Other low-cost homes constructed in Vietnam include a system of modular houses made from bamboo. See more architecture in Vietnam.

Photography is by Hiroyuki Oki.

Here’s a project description from a21studio:

The Nest

The house is designed for a middle-aged newsman who has been working in years for Vietnam architectural magazines. The site is located at the outskirt of a new city in being urbanism with a variety of housing architecture styles in its surrounding. Therefore, both the architect and client came up with the idea that the new house should be looked green, but not compromise to its comfortable and specially should not much differentiated to next-door neighbours.

Within his constraint budget, a light structure as steel and metal sheets is applied instead of bricks and concrete as usual. Moreover, unused furniture, abandoned but still in good condition, is considered as an appropriate solution for most parts of the house which not only reduces construction cost but also gives the house a distinctive look, the beauty or serenity of old items that comes with age.

Without any doubt, using steel structure not only makes the foundation lighter, but also helps shorten the construction period than normal, and saving cost as well. The house-frame is made by 90×90 steel columns and 30×30 steel beams connecting to metal sheets, then covered or filled in between by plants, so from a distance look, the house is like a green box. Among these “cool-metal” bars, the nature is defined itself.

Typically, the house is structured into two vertical parts; two private bedrooms on the upper floor, while kitchen and living room on the ground floor and opened to nature without any door or window. This makes the bounder between inside and outside becomes blurry. Besides, by diminishing living space to just sufficiently fitted and leaves the rest intended uncontrolled, the architect attempts to convey the sense that the natural environment outside is larger and closer, as at any views from the house, the trees can be observed with its full beauty. In the other words, the trees are used as the building’s walls, and the house would provide a variety of links between trees and people.

Finally, the idea of the house, above the organisation of spaces and flexibility uses of structure, is about a general housing concept for low cost construction, which has been attracted the attention in Vietnam society. By making the most of abandoned items and using enough spaces for living cleverly, people can easily have a comfortable house fulfilled by nature and flexible for any future needs with a limited fund.

Client: Tho
Location: Thuận An city, Bình Dương province, Vietnam
Project area: 100 sqm
Building area: 40 sqm
Materials: Steel bar, metal sheets
Completed: 2013

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a21studio appeared first on Dezeen.

New York studio HWKN has resurrected the nightclub of New York’s popular gay resort Fire Island Pines inside an asymmetric pavilion with criss-crossing timber braces (+ slideshow).

The Fire Island Pines Pavilion had been the main attraction of the Pines community since the 1980s, so when the building was destroyed by fire in 2011 HWKN was asked to rebuild it with an improved design.

The new building is a two-storey timber construction with a bar and terrace at ground floor level, plus a dance club and outdoor lounge on the first floor. There’s also a retractable roof so the club can be opened to the sky on warm summer evenings.

The corner of the structure appears to have been sliced away, angling the building’s terraces to face the nearby harbour and directing views towards new arrivals.

HWKN’s Marc Kushner explains: “When it is empty, [the new pavilion] is a muscular icon for the energy and vitality of the Pines – it visually welcomes every ferry that arrives to the island. As it fills with an afternoon crowd, the architecture fades in importance. The building becomes an armature to display the social spectacle of a weekend in the Pines.”

Bars on both floors feature zig-zagging outlines, intended to encourage more social encounters. Inside the nightclub, bleacher-style seating areas create viewing platforms and a rectangular skylight offers a window to the stars.

“We infused every space with a social engine, including the triangular bars that encourage casual meetings, the arena-like bleachers in the nightclub that put the ‘see and be seen’ opportunity into the third dimension and the inviting openness of the triangular facade frames,” comments HWKN’s Matthias Hollwich.

Hollwich and Kushner are the founding partners of HWKN. The studio’s most well-known project to date is Wendy, the giant spiky air-cleaning sculpture installed outside the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre last summer.

See more bars and nightclubs on Dezeen, including one with copper pipes stretching across its walls and one with chunky black trees inside.

Here’s some more information from HWKN:

Hollwich Kushner (HWKN) and Blesso Properties announce the near completion of the New Fire Island Pines Pavilion.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, so goes the Pavilion. The Fire Island Pines Pavilion, destroyed in 2011 by a devastating fire, is now near completion, once again giving the Pines community a central hub for culture and nightlife. The reincarnation of the legendary dance club is designed by New York-based Hollwich Kushner (HWKN) and developed by Blesso Properties.

“The building, located at the intersection of all traffic to and from the island, is shaped to become a part of the everyday way of life for the community by fitting in comfortably with the open, beachy, and modern feel of the Pines,” says Matthias Hollwich, co-founder of HWKN. “Going beyond that, we infused every space with a social engine, including the triangular bars that encourage casual meetings, the arena-like bleachers in the nightclub that put the “see and be seen” opportunity into the 3rd dimension, and the inviting openness of the triangular facade frames.”

The building’s form is sheared towards the harbour to visually welcome the over 800,000 visitors who arrive via ferry to Fire Island Pines every summer. The first floor offers a Welcome Bar to serve as a meeting place for all residents and visitors. The dance club encompasses the building’s second level, with a 2,400 square-foot dance floor and a 2,600 square-foot outdoor terrace which will host High Tea in the evenings, and double as an additional lounge at night. The Welcome Bar, the High Tea deck, and the Pavilion club space are all connected by an internal loop of stairs. Inside the club, stadium steps cascade out from one wall, creating an elevated view of the dance floor, with a skylight overhead providing a constant view of the starry night skies.

“The new pavilion is an architectural chameleon,” says Marc Kushner, co-founder of HWKN. “When it is empty, it is a muscular icon for the energy and vitality of the Pines – it visually welcomes every ferry that arrives to the island. As it fills with an afternoon crowd, the architecture fades in importance. The building becomes an armature to display the social spectacle of a weekend in the Pines.”

The building is an exercise in sustainability. Many of the design elements that make the space fun, like the massive retractable roof over the dance floor, serve a double purpose by providing passive cooling on hot summer nights. The decision to open half of the building to the outdoors vastly reduces the need for air conditioning, while also re-connecting people to the beauty of the natural environment in Fire Island. Additionally, the choice of finishes on the exterior and interior is calibrated to minimise material usage by exposing the Pavilion’s raw construction.

Hollwich adds, “When we started designing the Pavilion, we came to realise that we were not just reporting to Blesso Properties, but that there are also all of the Fire Island Pines homeowners and visitors who are our clients as well. We knew we needed to listen to all of them – and we believe we did, integrating everything we learned into the design of the new building.”

Throughout the entire rebuilding process, the team received hundreds of letters, emails and Facebook messages from Pavilion devotees offering ideas, critiques, and support for the new complex.

“In most of our projects, if I can achieve 90% of our design goals we view it as a triumph. In this case we got 100% as HWKN designed a flawless building,” says Matthew Blesso, Founder & CEO of Blesso Properties. “The design is incredibly bold, appropriately masculine and modern yet rustic. And they achieved this while meeting our diverse and demanding functional goals. The building will be a timeless icon for generations to come and I couldn’t be happier with the end result.”

The Pavilion’s reopening is perfectly timed with the 60th anniversary of the Pines, as the club has a long-standing heritage in the community. Originally built in 1985, it instantly changed the social landscape, imbuing it with the type of heartbeat only a nightclub can provide. The legacy of the Pines has been lovingly interwoven into every part of the new Pavilion, from the architecture to the programming.

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by HWKN appeared first on Dezeen.