Hasta La Ideas

More from architect Hironaka Ogawa: the two trees felled to make way for this house extension in Kagawa, Japan, were reinstalled inside the living room (+ slideshow).

The two-storey extension branches out into the garden of the 35-year-old family house to provide a residence for the client’s daughter and her husband.

The two trees stood in the way of construction and had to be removed beforehand, but Hironaka Ogawa was concerned about the connection they had to the family’s history. “These trees looked over the family for 35 years,” he explains.

The architect decided to keep the trees intact, dry them out and insert them into a double-height living and dining room. The floor was sunken just below ground level to ensure enough height to fit them in.

“Utilising these trees and creating a new place for the client became the main theme for the design,” says Ogawa, and explains that the family asked a Shinto priest to perform an exorcism on the trees as they were cut down.

Entitled Garden Tree House, the residence also contains a mezzanine loft that squeezes in alongside the trees. Bathrooms are tucked away below it.

Walls and ceilings are painted white, allowing the yellow and brown shades of the trees to stand out.

Trees were also the centrepiece of a wedding chapel that Hironaka Ogawa designed, which we featured on Dezeen this week. See more architecture from Japan on Dezeen.

Photography is by Daici Ano.

Here’s a full project description from Hironaka Ogawa:

Garden Tree House

This is an extension project on a thirty-five year-old house for a daughter and her husband. A Zelkova tree and a Camphor tree stood on the site since the time the main house was build thirty-five years ago.

Removing these trees was one of the design requirements because the new additional building could not be built if these trees remained. When I received the offer for the project, I thought of various designs before I visited the site for the first time. However, all my thoughts were blown away as soon as I saw the site in person. The two trees stood there quite strongly.

I listen to the stories in detail; the daughter has memories of climbing these trees when she was little. These trees looked over the family for thirty-five years. They coloured the garden and grew up with the family. Therefore, utilising these trees and creating a new place for the client became the main theme for the design.

In detail, I cut the two trees with their branches intact. Then I reduced the water content by smoking and drying them for two weeks. Thereafter, I placed the trees where they used to stand and used them as main structural columns in the center of the living room, dining room, and kitchen.

In order to mimic the way the trees used to stand, I sunk the building an additional 70 centimetres down in the ground. I kept the height of the addition lower than the main house while still maintaining 4 metre ceiling height.

By the way, the smoking and drying process was done at a kiln within Kagawa prefecture. These two trees returned to the site without ever leaving the prefecture.

The client asked a Shinto priest at the nearby shrine to remove evil when the trees were cut. Nobody would go that far without a love and attachment to these trees.

When this house is demolished and another new building constructed by a descendant of the client hundreds of years from now, surely these two trees will be reused in some kind of form.

Above: site plan – click for larger image

Above: floor plan – click for larger image

Above: cross section – click for larger image

Above: long section – click for larger image

Above: exploded isometric – click for larger image

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by Hironaka Ogawa appeared first on Dezeen.

British architect David Chipperfield has completed a new gallery building at the Saint Louis Art Museum in Missouri (+ slideshow).

With walls of dark polished concrete, stone and glass, the East Building was designed as a contemporary counterpart to the Italian-inspired museum designed by Cass Gilbert for the 1904 World’s Fair.

David Chipperfield‘s design features a grand staircase that connects the old building with the extension. Visitors can choose to enter the museum through Gilbert’s original portico or though the glazed frontage of the new wing.

The polished dark concrete walls are speckled with aggregates from the Missouri River, while inside a coffered concrete ceiling runs through the building and integrates a grid of skylights that let daylight filter down onto an oak floor.

Above: photograph is c/o the Saint Louis Art Museum

Set to open on 29 June, the East Building will accommodate both permanent collections and special exhibitions, giving the museum around 30 percent more gallery space. Temporary exhibitions will no longer be held in the main building, which will now be dedicated to static exhibits.

Above: photograph is by Simon Menges

Additional spaces include a 100-seat restaurant, a 60-seat cafe and an underground parking zone.

David Chipperfield first revealed designs for the structure in 2005, but the project had been delayed by funding issues. Architecture firm HOK worked alongside Chipperfield to deliver the building.

Above: photograph is by Simon Menges

The London-based architect has worked on a number of museum projects over the years. In 2007 he won the Stirling Prize for the Museum of Modern Literature in Germany and he also designed the Hepworth Wakefield gallery in the UK. Recent projects include designs for a museum of fine arts in Reims, France. See more architecture by David Chipperfield.

Photography is by Jacob Sharp, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s some more information from the press release:

Expanded and Renovated Saint Louis Art Museum to Open its New East Building by Sir David Chipperfield on June 29-30, 2013

Brent R. Benjamin, director of the Saint Louis Art Museum, today announced details of the grand opening of the Museum’s more than 200,000-square-foot East Building, designed by renowned British architect Sir David Chipperfield with technical assistance from HOK. A weekend celebration, held on June 29 and 30, will welcome the public to the monumental new structure of dark polished concrete-and-stone panels and floor-to-ceiling windows, set in historic Forest Park as a contemporary counterpart to the scale and dignity of the original building, designed by Cass Gilbert for the 1904 World’s Fair.

All inaugural exhibitions in the East Building will be drawn from the collections of the Saint Louis Art Museum, revealing as never before the riches of one of America’s premier encyclopedic art museums. The expansion adds 82,452 square feet of galleries and public space – an increase of about 30 percent – while linking the Museum more closely with Forest Park through a design by the celebrated French landscape architect Michel Desvigne. The project also adds a host of new visitor amenities to the Museum, all in support of a civic institution that is always open free to the public.

“The ideal of a democratic Palace of the Arts, which Cass Gilbert so powerfully embodied in our original building, now finds beautiful, modern-day expression, at once rigorous and elegant, in the adjoining masterwork by Sir David Chipperfield,” Brent R. Benjamin stated. “Celebrating the Forest Park site, harmonizing with the 1904 building, and creating a distinctive architectural work for our own time, the East Building will offer the people of St. Louis, and our visitors from around the world, a remarkable new view of the outstanding collections of this Museum and of the vital role that an art museum can play in public life.”

Barbara B. Taylor, president of the Saint Louis Art Museum, stated, “The unprecedented success of the East Building capital campaign, which to date has secured commitments of more than $160 million, surpassing its $145 million public goal, is a testament to the importance of the Saint Louis Art Museum in the life of our city, and a statement of confidence in this Museum’s position among national institutions.”

Inaugural exhibitions to celebrate the collections

The Museum’s collections span some 5,000 years and feature masterpieces from the ancient Mediterranean, Asia, Africa, the Islamic world, Europe and the Americas. All aspects of the collections will be celebrated at the time of the opening.

In the East Building, the inaugural installation in the new special exhibitions galleries will be Postwar German Art in the Collection, an extensive re-examination of this major aspect of the Museum’s holdings. The exhibition will address themes and groupings such as the legacy of Joseph Beuys; the large-scale works of Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Anselm Kiefer; and the influence of the Düsseldorf School of Photography. Drawing from impressive strengths in the Museum’s collections, these galleries will feature works by artists including Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Martin Kippenberger, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Andreas Gursky and Candida Höfer.

The East Building galleries dedicated to the permanent collection will explore developments in American art after World War II. Beginning with American responses to Surrealism and the emergence of Abstract Expressionism, the presentation will proceed to movements including Minimalism, Pop and Process art. Galleries also will address themes such as the return to figuration and contemporary modes of abstraction. Artists represented in the installation will include earlier figures such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella,Ellsworth Kelly and Andy Warhol and more recent artists such as Leonardo Drew, Teresita Fernández, Kerry James Marshall and Julie Mehretu. Thirty percent of the works in the installation will not have been on view for approximately a decade.

The Museum’s former temporary exhibition galleries in the 1904 building will now be devoted to the permanent collection, and more than 50 galleries in the Cass Gilbert-designed Main Building recently have been reinstalled as part of a renovation project complementing the East Building expansion. Notable reinstallations in the original building include the galleries for 18th century European art, with works by Canaletto, Tiepolo, Chardin, Reynolds and Gainsborough presented within the context of the Grand Tour; the French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist galleries, with works by masters from Manet, Monet and Renoir through van Gogh and Gauguin installed thematically; and a dedicated gallery to house the Museum’s collection of the work of Max Beckmann, the largest of its kind in the world.

Among the major reinstallations to be revealed at the time of the grand opening will be A New View: Surrealism, Abstraction and the Modern City. Exploring three great themes in the art of the first half of the 20th century, the installation will examine Surrealism as reflected in the work of Giorgio di Chirico and Max Ernst and the abstract approaches evident in works by Paul Klee, Roberto Matta, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Alberto Giacometti. A second section of the installation will focus on the pivotal role of Piet Mondrian in European abstraction. The third section will explore the importance of urban imagery in the work of artists including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Amedeo Modigliani and Robert Delaunay.

Another major reinstallation in the 1904 building will be A New View: Ancient American Art, presenting some 300 works from the ancient cultures of the WesternHemisphere. Constituting the first reconfiguration since 1981 of the Museum’s esteemed collection of ancient American art, the installation will include works from the Inca and Moche of South America, the Maya and Aztec of Mexico and the Mississippian cultures of the Midwest.

The opening of the East Building will also mark the inauguration of Stone Sea, a major new outdoor work commissioned by the Museum from the celebrated British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. Using stone from the Earthworks Quarry in Perryville, Mo., Goldsworthy has built 25 10-foot arches, each weighing approximately 13 tons, arranged in a dense composition that evokes the texture and movement of theancient shallow seas that once covered the Midwest.

Highlights of the East Building design

Visitors to the Saint Louis Art Museum may use the existing Sculpture Hall entrance in the 1904 building, where Cass Gilbert’s original main-floor layout has been restored as part of the expansion project, or may use the fully accessible new entrance to the East Building. Either way, the contrast is immediately apparent between the neo-classical 1904 building and the East Building, with its facade of floor-to-ceiling windows and twenty-three monumental panels of dark polished concrete gleaming with highlights of Missouri river aggregates.

David Chipperfield’s design joins the two buildings seamlessly with a new Grand Stair, which also establishes clear and organic connections among primary circulation axes. The new circulation path leads directly from the Grand Stair to lower-level galleries and a concourse with a new 60-seat cafe, a renovated museum shop and auditorium, and access to a new below-grade parking garage.

The outstanding design feature of the galleries of the East Building is an innovative coffered ceiling made of white concrete. The ceiling houses 698 coffers, most with scrimmed skylights to provide abundant but controlled natural light to the galleries. The lighting system is designed in collaboration with Arup.

Floors in the East Building are made of six-inch-wide planks of white oak, and the floor vents are stainless steel, both chosen to minimize distraction from the works of art.

The landscape design by Michel Desvigne features the installation of outdoor sculptures by artists including Alexander Calder, Henry Moore and George Rickey; as well as new plantings – including approximately 300 trees – in accordance with St. Louis’s existing Forest Park Master Plan. The landscape design will be executed in phases, with much of the most significant work to be completed after the June 2013 opening.

New visitor amenities

The outstanding new amenity in the East Building will be a new 2,500-square-foot restaurant, offering seating for 100 patrons with dramatic views overlooking Forest Park’s Art Hill. A private dining room in the restaurant will accommodate as many as 40 guests. Operating the restaurant and the new Museum cafe will be the Bon Appétit Management Company, which is known for its restaurant service at institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Seattle Art Museum and the Getty Center.

Among the other significant amenities offered as part of the expansion project are a renovated museum shop, a renovation and upgrade of the 480-seat auditorium, the provision of three new classrooms, a dedicated art-study space and a school-group entrance in the existing buildings and the development of a new 129,000-square-foot below-grade parking garage in the East Building, accommodating 300 vehicles.

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by David Chipperfield appeared first on Dezeen.

Columns branch outwards like a grove of trees around the aisle of this wedding chapel in Gunma, Japan, by Tokyo architect Hironaka Ogawa (+ slideshow).

The Forest Chapel sits in the garden of an existing wedding centre and Hironaka Ogawa wanted to make a direct reference to the surroundings. “I took the trees in the garden as a design motif and proposed a chapel with randomly placed, tree-shaped columns,” he explains.

The sprawling steel columns are dotted randomly around the interior, creating irregular arches for the bride to walk beneath. “I intended to create various looks by rotating the columns and placing them throughout the space,” adds Ogawa.

Each steel column comprises eight components, which are fixed together in a cross formation.

A length of glazing skirts the outer walls, letting natural light filter in at ankle level. Two tall windows also puncture an angled wall at the back of the building, directing sunlight around the altar.

Wooden pews provide traditional rows of seating for guests.

The Forest Chapel was completed in 2011 and was one of the nominees in the civic and community category at the World Architecture Festival last summer.

Other wedding chapels we’ve featured include a cylindrical registry office in China and a shimmering golden chapel in England.

Photography is by Daici Ano.

Here’s a statement from Hironaka Ogawa:

This is a new chapel built in the garden of an existing wedding facility which is surrounded by trees. The building looks like a simple white box floating in the air to be in harmony with the existing facility. On the other hand, I took the trees in the garden as a design motif and proposed a chapel with randomly placed, tree-shaped columns using angle irons.

In detail, I gathered eight angle irons composed of four 90 x 90 x 7mm L-angle irons and four 75 x 75 x 6mm L-angle irons to create a cross-shaped column. I intended to create a column that branches out up above depicting gentle curves of a tree. I applied two different curves for both size L-angle irons and created two types of tree-shape columns.

I intended to create various looks by rotating the columns and placing them throughout the space. The tree-shaped columns serve as decorations as well as important structural elements that receive the building’s vertical load and wind pressure.

Each tree-shaped column is placed a decent distance from each other by their branched out, angled irons. It is also rational for the building structure.

The forest in nature also consists of trees that keep certain distances from each other under different conditions. The distances and shapes of the columns’ branches made by rigid angle irons creating the silence and tension that is appropriate for a place like a wedding chapel where people make their vows.

Above: site plan

Above: floor plan – click for larger image

Above: section – click for larger image

Above: east and west elevations – click for larger image

Above: north elevation – click for larger image

Above: south elevation – click for larger image

Above: column detail

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Hironaka Ogawa appeared first on Dezeen.

Walls, shelves and desks are all made from piles of modular blocks at this office in Paris by French studio h2o Architectes (+ slideshow).

As the workplace for creative agency Hypernuit, the office occupies a ground floor unit that is visible to the street through floor-to-ceiling shop windows.

h2o Architectes were asked to create workspaces for five people, plus a small meeting room. “The refurbishment project had to reflect the dynamic and innovative spirit of the agency with a serene and contemporary space,” explain the architects.

The muted grey blocks come in a mixture of shapes and sizes, and are piled up around the room to define separate areas for each occupant. Shelves surround the desks to offer seclusion, but each one also faces out into a central corridor.

“The balance of these elements and the different scenarios help to define hierarchy and priorities,” the architects told Dezeen. “The modules have different shapes and proportions so that they can be used for as many functions as you can imagine.”

The white interiors of the blocks give a second tone to the plain grey furnishings, offering a simple backdrop to the colourful books, plants and stationary that were inevitably added afterwards.

As well as the usual storage areas, the space incorporates display boards for temporary photography exhibitions.

All of the modular parts were constructed in the workshop then assembled on site to ensure a speedy construction process. The arrangement can also be reconfigured to adapt to future needs and changes.

Architects Charlotte Hubert and Jean-Jacques Hubert launched h2o Architectes in 2005. Antoine Santiard joined them in 2008 and the team have since completed an apartment in Paris for a comic-strip collector and a garden pavilion where furniture forms the entire interior. See more architecture by h2o Architectes.

Photography is by Julien Attard.

Here’s a project description from h2o Architectes:

Hypernuit Offices, Paris

Context

The project takes place on the ground floor of a building of flats, behind a large window looking out onto the Clignancourt Street. The office space to create has a single orientation; it is a well-lit, plainly treated volume with a simple geometry. The commission consisted in fitting-out an office space including five identical desks, a common meeting room and shared facilities.

Hypernuit is an agency employing different people as artistic directors, graphic designers and workers in public relations. The refurbishment project had to reflect the dynamic and innovative spirit of the agency with a serene and contemporary space.

It also had to include a maximum of shelving for storage, the creation of exhibition walls for the display of photography shows. The schedule for the building works was very tight.

h2o architectes created for these offices a sort of indoor landscape thanks to a play with blocks.

These volumes of varied form and size constitute the living space for each person working there. Their adjunction and combination help compose the furniture, the desks, the separation and exhibition walls, the coffers etc.

The different parts were made in a workshop to save time on the building-site. The unitary treatment of the floor and of the furniture responds to the demand of a serene atmosphere.

The space is enlivened by the white color of the thickness of the different blocks and of course by the books and objects brought by each user. Each desk benefits from both openness towards the shared space and a more private area which can be modeled by a play with void and volume.

Design Architects: h2o architectes
Program: Development of an office space for five desks, meeting room and shared facilities
Location: 72 Rue Clignancourt, Paris 18th, France
Client: Private, Hypernuit
Area: 65m²
Date: Delivered January 2013

Above: floor plan

Above: cross section

Above: 3D model view one

Above: 3D model view two

Above: typical modular desk units

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by h2o Architectes appeared first on Dezeen.

Residents taking a bath or using the toilet are on show to swimmers in the pool at this brick and concrete house in Chiang Mai, Thailand (+ slideshow).

The house was designed by local studio SO, also known as Situation-based Operation. Named Wonderwall, it comprises a series of both indoor and outdoor rooms that fold around a row of chunky brick walls.

The residence is organised over a series of split levels to negotiate the slopes of the hill. Staircases are dotted around the rooms to prescribe different routes between floors.

“The house is basically a living space,” explains architect Narong Othavorn. “[It has] a huge open plan and open space between indoor and outdoor, with the big wall cutting through the existing landform to create the sequential scenes, exposing it to different space and functions.”

The swimming pool is positioned on the uppermost storey, sandwiched between the main bedroom and bathroom. Walls are glazed on the facades of both rooms so that they face each other across the water.

“I just wanted the owner to be able to shower right after swimming,” Othavorn told Dezeen.

Louvred fencing surrounds this cluster of rooms to let in light, but also maintains privacy from the rest of the house.

“The bedroom can be seen once entering the plot, but can only be accessed at the end of the sequential scene by passing through a gallery-like living room and the swimming pool,” added Othavorn.

The “gallery-like” living and dining room is also located on the top floor, while a sheltered outdoor kitchen and living room sits on the level below.

A square terrace covers one of the rooftops and is designed to double-up as an outdoor cinema.

The architect’s materials palette included red clay bricks, exposed concrete and timber decking. Glass walls are made up of concertinaed panels that hinge open when necessary.

Other residences we’ve featured from Thailand include a Bangkok apartment with an outdoor shower room and a renovation of two traditional shophouses.

See more architecture from Thailand ».

Photography is by Piyawut Srisakul.

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by SO appeared first on Dezeen.