Hasta La Ideas

Yesterday, two things happened surrounding the 2012 London Olympics. First, the organizing committee announced that it has selected the winners of its competition to design two large public spaces for the soon-to-be Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Second, and by extension, its selection of James Corner Field Operations for one half of the project, proves that the powerful name now wielded by the co-designing firm behind New York’s High Line extends well across our own borders. Corner’s firm will handle the south side of the park, and native London-based Erect Architecture will take the lead to the north, combining for a total of more than 50 acres in new landscaping. However, it won’t just be the two working within their own ranks, as this was a large competition and, as such, meant bringing in a handful of top tier other firms to serve under their lead. Here’s a break down of each from the Press Association:

The south park design team is: James Corner Field Operations working with engineers Arup (London), Make Architects (London), identity and graphics by tomato (London), planting and horticulture by Piet Oudolf (Netherlands), lighting designers and consultants L’Observatoire International (New York), events and live activity planning by Groundbreaking, play consultants Playlink (London), quantity surveyors Deloitte (London).

The north park design team is led by Erect Architecture collaborating with structural engineers Tall engineers (London), service engineers Max Fordham (London), landscape consultants Land Use Consultants (London), artist and enabler Ashley McMormick (London), quantity surveyor Huntley Cartwright (Surrey) and play safety experts Children’s Play Advisory Service (Coventry).

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This prefabricated house in Portugal costs about the same price to manufacture as a family car (photographs by José Campos).

Designed by Mima Architects, the Mima House has a modular structure and be divided into rooms with a grid of removable partitions.

Large windows on each elevation have wooden frames and hinge open as doors.

Plywood panels transform the windows into walls to create privacy where necessary.

Some other interesting Portuguese house we’ve featured include one that the architect describes as a grey house with a black backpack and another with gaping chasms in the roof – see all our stories about Portugal here.

Here’s some more text from the architects:

Mima House
Viana do Castelo, Portugal

MIMA started from the intention of planning a dwelling that responds directly to the lifestyle of nowadays’ societies.

How can architecture adapt to the quick life changes and ambitions of a well informed and increasingly exigent society?

MIMA architects researched during years to be able to put together on a single object a fast produced, flexible, light and cheap yet good quality product, wrapped up with a pleasant clean design.

Motivation

More fundamentally, MIMA responds to the modern dream for clean sophisticated design and bright open spaces, launching in the housing market a dream 36 sq.m. dwelling which costs the same as a mid-range car.

Inspiration

MIMA’s concept is fundamentally inspired on the traditional Japanese house, the perfect paradigm for lightness, flexibility, comfort and pleasing lines.

The restrained order of its standardized building parts appealed to MIMA architects as the hallmark of a deeply rooted culture, confirmed over centuries and easily adaptable to any new development.

MIMA uses prefabricated construction methods, the secret for its quick production and low price.

Likewise, traditional Japanese residential post-and-beam construction could be considered inherently a system of prefabrication: it was based on regularized column spacing known as the ken, the infill elements of shoji screens, fusuma panels and tatami mats, prefabricated by individual craftsmen in different locations of Japan could be precisely put together almost like pieces of a puzzle.

Flexibility/Mutability

MIMA consists of a square post-and- beam structure completely glazed on all sides, subdivided by modular 1,5mx3m wooden frames.

MIMA houses come with additional plywood panels which can be placed on the inside and the outside of the building, for a replacement of any window by a wall in a matter of seconds. The inside is defined by a regular grid of 1,5m, whose intermediate lines leave gaps for internal walls to be added when needed.

Again, in a matter of seconds, a subdivided space can be replaced by an open space or vice versa.

Moreover, each side of internal and external walls can have a different color/finishing, which allows a dramatic change through a simple wall rotation.

Despite its standardized construction methods, MIMA houses can be customized in so many parameters, that you’ll hardly see two equal houses.

Interface

MIMA houses can be tested and customized any time at www.mimahousing.pt.

A 3D software developed by MIMA’s architects and software engineers allows a recognition of your land through Google Earth and generates an automatic 3D model for a realistic perception of the house and site.

This software allows for walking inside the house and defining the architectural finishes– external walls, internal divisions, materials and colors.

Construction: June 2011

Danish architects BIG seem to have a thing for skiing on rooftops and have designed some more buildings that double up as ski slopes, this time for a resort in Lapland.

Visitors to the Koutalaki Ski Village in Levi will be able take an elevator up to the rooftops of the four accommodation blocks and ski back down.

The competition-winning buildings will surround and shelter a public square that can be used for ice skating and music performances.

Cafes and bars will occupy the lower floors of the buildings, while the top floor of one block will offer panoramic views of the surrounding snow-covered landscape.

You can also read about BIG’s earlier proposals for a combined power plant and ski slope here, or see more stories about skating, skiing and sledging in our recent feature.

Here’s some more information from BIG:

BIG Unveils A Ski Resort In Lapland

BIG wins an invited competition for a 47.000 m2 ski resort and recreational area in Levi.

The future Ski Village will transform the existing Levi ski resort into a world class destination, offering top quality accommodation and leisure services for skiers of all levels and demands. The proximity to the Kittilä airport ensures easy access to the resort attracting international visitors to Levi village and the whole Lapland region.

The Finland-based developer Kassiopeia Finland Oy is investing in its local region as it currently owns and operates Hotel Levi Panorama, Levi Summit Congress Center and Hotel K5 Levi and above and beyond has interests in developing the exquisite Koutalaki area.

“BIG’s visionary approach of combining unique types of accommodation and amenities along with the leisure activities offered at the resort, left the jury in awe.

BIG’s ambitious plan challenges traditional thinking and we believe that the collaboration between Kassiopeia Finland and BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group will rise to the occasion.” Jury, Kassiopeia Finland Oy.

Located on a gentle slope, the existing Levi ski center provides the framework for the future Koutalaki Ski Village which is conceived as an extension of the summit and the existing cluster of buildings in Koutalaki.

BIG proposes to create a series of buildings that radiate out from a central square and whose ends touch the ground to create four freestanding buildings that each provide access to the roof and allow the skiers to descend from the resort’s rooftop downhill in any direction.

The soft curves of the undulating roofs of the four buildings create a visual continuity of the natural land­scape while lending the whole village the unique character of a skislope skyline that creates an inhabited mountain top.

“The Koutalaki Ski Village is conceived as an extension of both the summit and the resort. Grown from the natural topography rather than dropped from the sky – the ar­chitecture extends the organic forms of natural landscape creating an inhabitable as well as skiable manmade mountain.

As a result, our design for the Koutalaki Ski Village creates a new hybrid integrating distinct identities such as village and resort, shelter and openness, cozy intimacy and natural maj­esty, unique character and careful continuity – or simply – architecture and landscape.” Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Partner, BIG.

The four build­ings arc around a central square to create a new bustling village plaza at the heart of the resort, which is sheltered from the wind yet open and inviting to the surrounding landscape.

The plaza allows ice skating and music events and is connected to a bowl like yard with cafés and bars created by the lower interior heights of the new buildings. The intimate atmosphere of the spaces created here contrasts the open views from the summit.

The whole resort area is connected through a network of paths that prioritizes skiers and pedestrians. Access to the roofs happens through central elevator cores allowing skiing down either towards the courtyard or the piste. An elevator located centrally in the hotel provides access to the roof top restaurant with a 360 degree panorama views of the landscape and plaza.

”When first visiting the future Koutalaki village site you realize the proximity to the ski slopes but at the same time the importance of creating a connection for skiers as well. The gentle slope away from the main ski system seems to offer the solution for a unified proposal that creates maximum connectivity for skiers and pedestrians.” Jakob Lange, Partner-in-Charge, BIG.

All accommodation units offered at the new resort enjoy beautiful views of the surrounding nature, including the eight private villas which are situated at different elevations to provide an undisturbed panorama, while the elevated private gardens serve as an extension of the landscape. The villas embrace the snowy landscape and allow the snow in all its forms become a part of the architecture itself.

“Instead of creating design solutions that aim at dealing with snow by shoveling or moving it, we want to create a village that utilizes the full potential of snow. When it is caught on the façade the window frames become a living part of the landscape, adapting to changes in the weather. The light granite façade enhances the intimate relation with the nature.” Hanna Johansson, Project Leader, BIG.

While the four buildings simulate real ski slopes during winter time, combining the essence of a ski resort – skiing, relaxation, rec­reation and dwelling, the roofscape of the buildings during summer will be just as attractive serving as a green continuum of the surrounding natural landscape for hiking and pic­nics.

Name: Koutalaki Ski Village
Size: 47.000m2
Client: Kassiopeia Finland Oy
Location: Levi, Finland

Partners in Charge: Bjarke Ingels, Jakob Lange
Project Leader: Hanna Johansson
Team: David Tao, Erik de Haan, Jeff Mikolajewski, Jesper Victor Henriksson, Lucian Racovitan, Maren Allen

A triangular courtyard slices through the centre of this woodland retreat in Nagano, Japan.

Architects Kyoko Ikuta and Katsuyuki Ozeki designed the house, which is named Forest Bath.

The triangular void separates the house into three sections, comprising a living room at the centre, a bedroom in the west wing and a bathroom in the east.

A wall of glazing separates the living room from the courtyard, while the surrounding walls frame a view of the trees and sky.

Some other woodland houses in Japan we’ve featured include one composed of five connected cottages and another with gabled concrete walls – see more projects from Japan here.

Photography is by Tomohiro Sakashita.

Here’s some more information from Ikuta:

Forest bath

This is a summer house situated in the forest. In this house, by “digging a triangle plane into a house figure”, the view extending obliquely upward was gained. Since the site is comparatively flat, a specific view does not open, like hills, but the big Japanese larch which has grown over ten meter is beautiful. Because the views of the larch branches cannot be caught by adopting horizontal openings, we considered catching it by the opening in a slant direction.

Wooden shade is reflected in the center room dug by the triangle from a high position, and it changes every moment as time goes by. A natural expression is translated and expressed in forms, such as the shade of a tree and light, on a white canvas. Moreover, a sense of distance with trees is adjusted depending on how to place yourself, and it provides a spatial experience filtered with depth.

On the other hand, the rooms of both wings are contrastively darker than the center room, and they are illuminated by the wavering light coming from the center room. Through the low eaves, the view enters the space which leads to the bottom grass of the woods.

Click above for larger image

Project title: Forest bath
Location: Nagano, Japan
Use: Summer house
Completion: 2010
Steel construction
Land area: 590.94㎡
Total floor area: 71.37㎡

Architects:
Kyoko Ikuta / Kyoko　Ikuta Architecture Laboratory
Katsuyuki　Ozeki / Ozeki Architects & Associates

Structural engineering: IIJIMA Structural Design Office
Constructor: Daiichi kensetsu

It’s been an awkward, uncomfortable weekend for the Dutch architectural firm MVRDV. On Friday, the newspaper Algemeen Dagblad put on its front page a rendering of a project the firm is working on called The Cloud in South Korea, which is part of a larger Daniel Libeskind-planned development. The two skyscrapers stops halfway up in its familiar long, rectangle form, to bloom out into cubes jutting at disjointed angles that connect the two buildings, ultimately smoothing back out and continuing back to the usual skyscraper straight lines. It’s as if a cloud was floating past the two, hence the name. The paper, however, writes in its accompanying headline, “Inspired by Twin Towers?”, writing that the rendering of the project resembled the moment when planes exploded through the towers in New York on September 11th. That story quickly branched out and by the weekend, the firm says it was receiving “threatening emails and calls of angry people calling us Al Qaeda lovers or worse.” The firm has since released a statement, saying it regrets that people interpreted the project as such, but it was never in their minds at all. Why exactly designers of skyscrapers would want to play off the terrible destruction of other skyscrapers, we have no idea, but when the NY Daily News spoke to a former fire chief about MVRDV’s apology, he responded, “I think it’s a total lie and they have no respect for the people who died that day. I think they’re trying to sensationalize it. It’s a cheap way to get publicity.” Here’s a bit from the firm’s statement:

The Cloud was designed based on parameters such as sunlight, outside spaces, living quality for inhabitants and the city. It is one of many projects in which MVRDV experiments with a raised city level to reinvent the often solitary typology of the skyscraper. It was not our intention to create an image resembling the attacks nor did we see the resemblance during the design process. We sincerely apologize to anyone whose feelings we have hurt, it was not our intention.

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