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

The post Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013
by Sou Fujimoto appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto has been named as the designer of this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, which will be a cloud-like structure made from a lattice of steel poles.

The semi-transparent pavilion will occupy 350 square-metres of lawn outside the London gallery. Two entrances will lead inside the structure, where staggered terraces will provide seating for a central cafe.

Sou Fujimoto describes his design as “an architectural landscape” where “the vivid greenery of the surrounding plant life [is] woven together with a constructed geometry”.

“The delicate quality of the structure, enhanced by its semi-transparency, will create a geometric, cloud-like form, as if it were mist rising from the undulations of the park,” said Fujimoto. “From certain vantage points, the pavilion will appear to merge with the classical structure of the Serpentine Gallery, with visitors suspended in space.”

The temporary pavilion will open to the public on 8 June and will remain in Kensington Gardens until 20 October.

Sou Fujimoto is the third Japanese architect to accept the annual unpaid commission, which 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. Toyo Ito designed the pavilion in 2002, while SANAA followed in 2009. 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.

Last year’s pavilion was a cork-lined archaeological dig created by Herzog & de Meuron with Ai Weiwei, who was forbidden to leave China at the time. 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”. Before that it was a walled garden by Peter Zumthor, who told us at the opening in 2011: “I’m a passionate architect… I do not work for money”. Watch that movie here.

Other past commissions include Jean Nouvel and Frank Gehry – see our handy guide to all the Serpentine Gallery Pavilions here.

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

Here’s the full statement from Sou Fujimoto:

For the 2013 Pavilion I propose an architectural landscape: a transparent terrain that encourages people to interact with and explore the site in diverse ways. Within the pastoral context of Kensington Gardens, I envisage the vivid greenery of the surrounding plant life woven together with a constructed geometry. A new form of environment will be created, where the natural and the man-made merge; not solely architectural nor solely natural, but a unique meeting of the two.

The Pavilion will be a delicate, three-dimensional structure, each unit of which will be composed of fine steel bars. It will form a semi-transparent, irregular ring, simultaneously protecting visitors from the elements while allowing them to remain part of the landscape. The overall footprint will be 350 square-metres and the Pavilion will have two entrances. A series of stepped terraces will provide seating areas that will allow the Pavilion to be used as a flexible, multi-purpose social space.

The delicate quality of the structure, enhanced by its semi-transparency, will create a geometric, cloud-like form, as if it were mist rising from the undulations of the park. From certain vantage points, the Pavilion will appear to merge with the classical structure of the Serpentine Gallery, with visitors suspended in space.

The post Sou Fujimoto designs
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013 appeared first on Dezeen.

Here are some images by photographer Iwan Baan of a house by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, where rectangular windows puncture three layers of walls and ceilings.

Located in Oita, Japan, House N was constructed in 2008 to accommodate a couple and their pet dog.

Openings in the outer wall and roof aren’t glazed, so the patio garden, bathroom and kitchen contained behind are open to the elements.

A bedroom and tatami room are encased behind the second layer, where all window openings are infilled with glass.

The innermost layer closes in around the centre of the house, wrapping around a living and dining room.

See more projects by Sou Fujimoto here, including a stack of four house-shaped apartments.

Here’s some more text from Sou Fujimoto Architects:

House N
Oita, Japan

A home for two plus a dog. The house itself is comprised of three shells of progressive size nested inside one another. The outermost shell covers the entire premises, creating a covered, semi-indoor garden. Second shell encloses a limited space inside the covered outdoor space. Third shell creates a smaller interior space. Residents build their life inside this gradation of domain.

I have always had doubts about streets and houses being separated by a single wall, and wondered that a gradation of rich domain accompanied by various senses of distance between streets and houses might be a possibility, such as: a place inside the house that is fairly near the street; a place that is a bit far from the street, and a place far off the street, in secure privacy.

That is why life in this house resembles to living among the clouds. A distinct boundary is nowhere to be found, except for a gradual change in the domain. One might say that an ideal architecture is an outdoor space that feels like the indoors and an indoor space that feels like the outdoors. In a nested structure, the inside is invariably the outside, and vice versa. My intention was to make an architecture that is not about space nor about form, but simply about expressing the riches of what are `between` houses and streets.

Three nested shells eventually mean infinite nesting because the whole world is made up of infinite nesting. And here are only three of them that are given barely visible shape. I imagined that the city and the house are no different from one another in the essence, but are just different approaches to a continuum of a single subject, or different expressions of the same thing- an undulation of a primordial space where humans dwell. This is a presentation of an ultimate house in which everything from the origins of the world to a specific house is conceived together under a single method.

Architects: Sou Fujimoto Architects
Sou Fujimoto, principal-in-charge;
Yumiko Nogiri, project team

Consultants: Jun Sato Structural Engineers, structural
Structural system: reinforced concrete

Major materials: reinforced concrete
Site area: 236.57㎡
Built area: 150.57㎡
Total floor area: 85.51㎡
Structural Composition: RC; 1 story
Design Period: 2006 – 2007
Construction Period: will be completed in 2008

Design team: Sou Fujimoto Architects
Consultant: Jun Sato Structural Engineer

Here are some photographs from the exhibition Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion, designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto and currently on show at the Barbican gallery in London.

The show presents work by fashion designers including Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto alongside pieces from a new generation of designers that includes Tao Kurihara and Mintdesigns.

The lower gallery space is divided into four themed sections: In Praise of Shadows, Flatness, Tradition and Innovation, and Cool Japan, while the upper level houses dedicated spaces for each designer.

The exhibition continues until 6 February 2011.

Photographs are by Lyndon Douglas.

More stories about fashion »
More stories about Sou Fujimoto »

The following information is from the Barbican:

Future Beauty
30 Years of Japanese Fashion
15 October 2010 – 6 February 2011

Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion is the first exhibition in Europe to comprehensively survey avant-garde Japanese fashion, from the early 1980s to now. Japanese designers made an enormous impact on world couture in the late 20th century. Visionaries such as Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto redefined the very basis of fashion, challenged established Western notions of beauty, and turned fashion very firmly into art. Kawakubo’s protégé, the techno- couturier Junya Watanabe also features in the exhibition, together with the acclaimed Jun Takahashi, and the new generation of radical designers including Tao Kurihara, Matohu and Mintdesigns. Future Beauty opens at Barbican Art Gallery on 15 October 2010.

Kate Bush, Head of Art Galleries, Barbican Centre, said: The great Japanese designers – Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto – changed fashion forever in the 1980s. The tight silhouettes of Western couture were jettisoned for new fluid shapes. Out went the magnificent ornament and extravagant techniques of the post-war tradition and in came a stark, monochrome palette and an entirely new decorative language – holes, rips, frays and tears – emerging from the stuff of fabric itself. I am delighted that Barbican Art Gallery is the first gallery in Europe to chart this fascinating and influential period in design history, as well as the first gallery in Britain to present the Kyoto Costume Institute’s legendary collection.

Curated by the eminent Japanese fashion historian Akiko Fukai, Director, the Kyoto Costume Institute (KCI), and designed by acclaimed architect Sou Fujimoto, with sound installation by Janek Schaefer, the exhibition explores the distinctive sensibility of Japanese design and its sense of beauty embodied in clothing. Bringing together over 100 garments from the last three decades – many rarely lent by KCI, some never seen before in the UK – the exhibition also includes films of notable catwalk shows and documentaries.

Future Beauty explores the work of these designers in relation to Japanese art, culture and costume history. The lower galleries are arranged into four sections: In Praise of Shadows; Flatness; Tradition and Innovation and Cool Japan. Each area focuses on a different characteristic that pervades the work of the featured designers.

The first section, In Praise of Shadows, takes inspiration from the seminal text of the same name written by acclaimed Japanese author Juni’chirō Tanizaki in 1933. In Praise of Shadows reveals the enduring interest in a monochromatic palette, and nuanced textures and forms prevalent in contemporary Japanese fashion which – Fukai argues – arise from a cultural sensibility attuned to light and shade and the power of black. It features pieces by Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto from their revered collections of the early eighties to their work from recent seasons, alongside garments by Junya Watanabe, Jun Takahashi and Matohu.

Flatness explores the simple geometries and interplay of flatness and volume in the work of Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo. This section includes a series of specially commissioned striking photographs by Japanese artist and photographer Naoya Hatakeyama.

In the next section the relationship between Tradition and Innovation is considered – from the radical reinvention of traditional Japanese garments and techniques, such as kimono and origami, to the technological advances in textile fabrication and treatment. It includes a series of paper garments by TAO, OhYa and Mintdesigns; Watanabe’s seminal autumn / winter 2000 collection Techno Couture; examples of Kawakubo’s deconstructionist work; as well as modern takes on traditional Japanese techniques and garments by Yamamoto, Kenzo and Matohu.

The final section in the lower galleries focuses on the phenomenon that is Cool Japan. Featuring works by TAO, Jun Takahashi for Undercover and Naoki Takizawa, for Issey Miyake, among others. Cool Japan examines the symbiotic relationship between street style, popular culture and high fashion. There are also a series of rooms showing catwalk collection films, interviews and Wim Wenders’ classic documentary on Yamamoto Notebook of Cities and Clothes.

The upper galleries of Future Beauty are dedicated to focused presentations on each of the principle designers in the show featuring a range of archive and recent works: Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, Junya Watanabe, Jun Takahashi and Tao Kurihara, as well as Mintdesigns and a number of emerging designers such as Akira Naka, Anrealage, Né-Net, Sacai, Somarta, Mikio Sakabe, and Taro Horiuchi.

Also included in the upper galleries are catwalk collection films, and a wealth of rare books, catalogues and magazines, which highlight Yamamoto, Miyake and Kawakubo’s collaborations with artists, photographers and designers.

Future Beauty: 30 years of Japanese Fashion, 15 October 2010 – 6 February 2011 is co-organised by Barbican Art Gallery and the Kyoto Costume Institute. It is curated by Akiko Fukai, Director/Chief Curator of the Kyoto Costume Institute and Kate Bush, Head of Art Galleries.

The exhibition is supported by Wacoal Corp and Sumitomo Corporation Europe Ltd. Additional support for the KCI and Barbican exhibition is provided Shiseido Co.,Ltd. Media Partners: The Daily Telegraph and Dazed & Confused. The exhibition travels to Haus der Kunst, Munich, 4 March – 18 June 2011.

See also:

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