Hasta La Ideas

For its 125th birthday, the brand Mercedes-Benz presented employees a brand pavilion and celebrating this anniversary with a road show through Germany..

By the time New York celebrates its 400th anniversary in 2025, one million more people will be nestled amongst its already cramped streets. Other cities around the world are dealing with density in creative ways; Hamburg is expanding into its waterways with the first of a series of planned houseboat communities. Now New York may be making more of its own waterways with a new proposal developed by a group of Columbia architecture and real estate grad students. Called “The Present Future of New York City,” the plan seeks to grow land from Governor’s Island, eventually connecting it to Manhattan’s southernmost point.

How do you grow land, you may be asking? The students researching the idea found that the Army Corps of Engineers currently pays to ship out tons of dredged muck from the waterways around New York City. So the students thought, why not reuse all that waste to create a sixth borough instead? Yeah, it sounds like a stretch, not only of the imagination but of engineering. How can you turn a bunch of sludge into a livable area, a place where you can actually build? The first step, apparently, is to take out of commission subway cars, drop them into the river and cover them with landfill. If this sounds crazy you should know that New York regularly dumps outdated subway cars into the Atlantic Ocean, simply because they have nowhere else to dispose of them. But instead of trashing the cars, we might very well be able to use them to our benefit, recycling them into the slow expansion of an 88-100 million square foot land mass, a borough they’re tentatively calling Lo-Lo Ma.

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Light floods into this Kyoto house by Japanese studio FORM/Kouichi Kimura Architects through a light well in its enormous chimney.

The two-storey residence, named House of Representation, occupies a countryside location and has an off-white rendered exterior.

Rooms on the house’s ground floor surround a central living room with a recessed stone floor.

A staircase with glass handrails leads up to a study on the first floor, as well as a bedroom that opens out to a rooftop balcony.

We’ve published lots of houses by FORM/Kouichi Kimura Architects on Dezeen, all with rendered monochrome exteriors – take a closer look at them all here.

Photography is by Takumi Ota.

Here’s a little more explanation from the architects:

House of representation

This house is planned on a site from where there are beautiful views of the country side.

The request from the client was for the creation of intimacy, but with large living area.

The exterior is designed as a monumental form so that it can seem to be a new addition to the countryside scenery.

I created a centripetal plan where each room is connected through a corridor from the multi-level living area.

Around the corridor, walls, which have different textures and shapes, make a sequence inside the space.

The walls and spaces are highlighted by natural, indirect light, so your eyes are drawn to, and focus on, the interior.

By the basic process of manipulating and controlling “light” and “views”, I tried to make the inside space more intimate and deeper.

Rather than doing large gestures of acrobatic space composition, I have instead created what I feel is a space that represent the unusual, by doing small and poetic movements that control light and the viewers eyes.

Architect: Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects
Location: Kyoto, Japan
Client: Private

Construction: 2011
Site area: 355.78 m
Construction area: 213.20 m

Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat has completed a mixed-use block in Hamburg with a facade that parts like a pair of red curtains.

Located in the Hafencity development area of the city, the ten-storey Sumatrakontor is clad in stone that references the red colour of brick buildings nearby on the harbour.

Shops line the building at ground level, while offices, luxury apartments and a five star hotel are contained in the floors above.

Where the facade parts, glazing screens a ground-floor lobby that extends up through the full height of the building.

Erick van Egeraat also recently completed an underground museum extension – see it here and see more projects by the architect here.

Photography is by J Collingridge.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

Erick van Egeraat completes ‘Sumatrakontor’ in Hamburg

At Hamburg Hafencity the brand new ‘ Sumatrakontor ‘ by Dutch Architect Erick van Egeraat was officially opened. The 37.000 sq-metre, ten story – multifunctional building houses a variety of inner-urban functions such as; a five-star Hotel, Offices and Conference rooms, retail, high-end housing and an underground parking garage.

The office and conference spaces maximize the variety in use due to the flexible structure offering units from 400 to 4.000m2. The retail in the lower floors ensure vitality in use and dynamics throughout the day. Erick van Egeraat’s design refers to the richly detailed existing red-brick harbor buildings of the ‘Speicherstad’  but does so in a contemporary manner. The large volume appears to be ‘cut’ in 4 different volumes and this is underlined by a specific dialectic play between glass, aluminium and red natural stone slabs for each of the different volumes. The inner courtyard on the other hand emphasises on the calm comfort of the traditional white plastered facades in the city center of Hamburg.

“I wanted to elaborate on the existing quality of this historic waterfront in a contemporary manner, so the Sumatrakontor needed to combine a number of qualities in both function and appearance. In this way the building really becomes an attribution in the activation of the city “ says Erick van Egeraat.

Whilst the original Masterplan set out to develop the ‘ Hafencity ‘ with simple building blocks, Erick van Egeraat’s interpretation is an evolution. In a playful manner the Sumatrakontor evolves upon the urban-rules set out in the masterplan, but it also leaves room for chance, for interpretation. One of the ‘cuts’ in the northern façade creates a void which in itself is the access to the inner courtyard. This courtyard is the inhabitants private garden in a environment which is largely dominated by stone.

The Sumatrakontor was initially developed by property investors ING REim, SNS property finance and Gross + Partners the latter was recently acquired by real estate investor Pramerica.

On an urban scale, the building’s shape allows a semi-public space and stimulates social interaction, while its architectonic appearance strongly relates to the character of Hamburg. The new building designed by Erick van Egeraat and his team is therefore a perfect example of the specific theme Erick van Egeraat introduced in his design for the Überseequarter: connecting the inner city with the revitalized waterfront and making the Überseequartier an integral part of the new and dynamic 21st century Hamburg.

Every floor of this Tokyo house by Japanese studio Keiji Ashizawa Design opens onto a garden or terrace.

Located in a quiet residential area, the three-storey House S has a dark, windowless street facade with a recessed porch and wooden front door.

Inside, a living and dining area spans the entire ground floor and opens out to a garden flanked by trees.

A winding staircase leads to the two upper storeys, where four bedrooms each have their own dressing rooms.

A grassy mound and pebble garden occupy the first floor balcony, while two separate doors on the second floor lead out to a large wooden deck and garden.

From here, an outdoor staircase ascends to another decked seating area that covers the roof.

Balconies and terraces seem to be a key feature in many of Keiji Ashizawa’s projects – see our previous story about a renovated house with covered balconies and a new roof deck.

Photography is by Daici Ano.

Keiji Ashizawa sent us the following text:

House S

House S is located in a quiet residential area in a center of Tokyo.

The site is of the house is a cul-de-sac, removed from the main thoroughfares, and was once a samurai residence, so their are old pine and zelkova trees in the area.

Such surroundings, even in the midst of the city, significantly impacted the design.

The house includes many gardens on each floor of the house, to bring the surrounding landscape into the house.

In the end, the house will be part of this larger landscape, and in the meantime the green surroundings will help with privacy.

The clients wanted to insure that they could enjoy this larger landscape, as well as the art and furnishings that they have collected.

We extensively discussed both their life style and a setting for these furnishings – and how to mold materials, light, air and space to fit this broader goal.

All materials, lighting and space are in constructed within the house to work with art and furniture, as well as function.

Details and colors are considered for these things. They should be silent, but should have an identity. Most of the design details were developed specifically for this house, with this overall purpose in mind, down to handles, steps and windows.

The structure is complex, but we tried not to make this visible. The space was considered first in terms of the light from the outside, the flow of air, and the planning of art. Enjoyable to see or feel each in the space, and on each level, showing four clear seasons with different light and feelings.

House-S, take client’s name and site name as it was created out of the fusion of the the multitude of things that were important to the site and to the client, rather than for a single, simple theme.

Site: Tokyo
Architect: Keiji Ashizawa Design

Project architect: Keiji Ashizawa / Rie Honjo
Structural engineer: Akira Suzuki