Hasta La Ideas

Dutch office UNStudio has developed a concept for a giant Ferris wheel in Japan that could rival the London Eye and the Singapore Flyer.

Proposed for an as-yet undisclosed location, UNStudio’s Nippon Moon will combine the familiar design of an observation wheel with a network of virtual interfaces that will allow visitors to create their own augmented realities.

Each of the wheel’s 32 capsules will offer a different theme. After downloading a dedicated app for smartphones and tablets, users will be able to introduce animations and sounds that enhance this theme, or initiate virtual realities within the glazed outer walls.

Studio founder Ben van Berkel told Dezeen: “The technology and engineering involved in observation wheels will always at first sight appear similar, however for the Nippon Moon we have not only introduced double-decker capsules for the first time, but have also concentrated on providing heightened engagement levels and a novel user-experience.”

Other functions of the app will include a queuing system, removing the need for visitors to wait in line before boarding, and a communications network that will permit interaction between different capsules. Visitors will also be able to share their images of the experience using a digital “hall of fame”.

“The latest technology is incorporated in the capsules to create integrated augmented reality that creates new levels of engagement – both in terms of the surrounding views and through communication and interaction between users,” said Van Berkel. “Through this, the Nippon Moon becomes not just an observation platform, but a platform for heightened observation and the stimulation of the imagination.”

UNStudio are working alongside user-experience designers Experientia to develop the interactive aspects of the project, while engineers Arup and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are collaborating on the technical specifications.

Since the completion of the London Eye in 2000, observation wheels have been proposed for various cities around the world. The Singapore Flyer became the tallest in 2008, taking over from the Star of Nanchang in China, while others are proposed for New York, Dubai and Las Vegas.

UNStudio is also currently working on a complex of skyscrapers linked by aerial bridges for Beijing and a 30-storey residential tower for London. See more architecture by UNStudio »

Here’s a project description from UNStudio:

GOW Nippon Moon, Japan

In 2012 UNStudio was invited by Ferris Wheel Investment to formulate a vision for the design of a Giant Observation Wheel in Japan. Due to the popularity of Ferris Wheels in Japanese culture and a potential flow of millions of tourists from South-East Asia, the project was required to have an international impact and differ substantially from all existing wheels of its kind.

Structural constraints defined by Arup and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries – two of the world’s most specialised wheel engineers – left little room for manoeuvre due to the location and the size of the GOW. The challenge for UNStudio however was to find a typical language for the architectural design which would characterise the overall idea behind the function of the Observation Wheel. Essential to this approach was the creation of a coherent design strategy which could capture the full scope of the user-experience offered by the Observation Wheel. In order to individually suit this experience to the visitors, UNStudio partnered with Experientia to research how behaviour could influence user-experience.

Knowledge wheel

UNStudio’s ‘Nippon Moon’ is a new cultural blockbuster in the broadest sense. It has been designed to create a journey in which learning about the environment, culture and one’s individual part in this is central. Four key elements define the logics of the socio-architectural design; enhancement of the senses, interactivity, experience and romanticism. Through the integration of interactive design elements it was possible to extend the design far beyond both the moment you physically become part of the wheel and long after you disembark. In order to achieve this, a virtual world was created in which the visitor becomes part of the social network which revolves around the GOW. Discovery, the Ride and the Return are three chapters of the design which contribute to attracting visitors and to the stimulation of the imagination.

The journey begins with the optional online purchase of tickets and the downloading of the Nippon Moon app. Visitors can not only chose the time of their ride, but can also choose the theme of their experience, as each of the single and double-decker capsules on the wheel focus on a different theme. Upon entering the visitor centre guests are greeted by the ‘Hall of Fame’, a dynamic installation of digital photographs taken by visitors during their ride. These photographs can be uploaded instantly to the Hall of Fame during the ride and discovered on display in the installation upon leaving. From the ticket pick-up point and cloakroom facilities on the ground floor, the visitor follows a circular ramp, along which retail, food & beverage and exhibition pockets are anchored. Due to a system of ‘Active Queuing’ which notifies the visitor of the time remaining until boarding, standing in line for extended periods of time is eradicated, leaving the visitor free to make use of all the facilities until it is their time to board their pre-selected capsule.

The Nippon moon app is designed as a strategy for a user-experience interface that can be installed on smartphones and tablets. During the ride, this accessible software makes it possible to communicate with people in the other capsules, who are otherwise physically and visually separated from you and whose capsule follows a different theme to your own. In addition the possibility to enhance the senses through the incorporation of augmented animations or sounds helps to focus the experience of the visitor. The app also allows the visitor to switch from reality to digitally altered views from the capsules, which are created through augmented reality techniques in the transparent skin of the capsules.

Interactivity is used to develop a greater sense and understanding of the surrounding reality and results in an active rather than a passive visitor. The experience mediates between the real and the virtual, bringing about a significantly different moment in time and creating a memory or ‘after image’.

Upon leaving the wheel, the visitor follows a second circular ramp with further facility pockets, eventually returning to the cloakroom area on the ground floor.

Romanticism is an integral part of the vision to ensure that the design and engineering of the wheel can become embedded in history as a new development in engineering and an integral part of modern Japanese culture. The concept of the observation wheel itself is not new, however the idea to merge the robustly designed and engineered physical wheel with a fully integrated virtual world creates the unique character of the Nippon Moon GOW.

Client: Ferris wheel Investment Co.,Ltd
Location: Japan
Building surface: Terminal and platform 7.200 m2
Building volume: Terminal and platform 90.000 m3
Capsules: 32
Building site: 18.000 m2
Programme: Giant Observation Wheel
Status: design

UNStudio: Ben van Berkel, Gerard Loozekoot with Frans van Vuure, Filippo Lodi and Harlen Miller, Jan Kokol, Wendy van der Knijff, Todd Ebeltoft, Tina Kortmann, Patrik Noome, Jeroen den Hertog, Iain Jamieson

Engineer: Arup Tokyo + Melbourne
Interactive design: Experientia, Italy
Animation: Submarine, Amsterdam
Visualisation: MIR

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by UNStudio appeared first on Dezeen.

Wooden furniture forms sections of staircases at this house in Japan by Tato Architects (+ slideshow).

Japanese studio Tato Architects incorporated items of furniture into the circulation and structure of the three-storey house in Itami, a city in Hyōgo Prefecture.

“Architecture and furniture are mingled,” said architect Yo Shimada. “I keep trying to create freedom in rooms as if all of [the furniture] is just randomly placed and used by chance.”

Steps up from the middle floor are created by solid drawers that appear to be pulled out from a dresser, which can still store items inside. A low coffee table provides the first tread.

The furniture fills the gaps between an otherwise white metal staircase ascending to the top floor.

“I always think the way of dealing with stairs is important in houses, especially in small ones, said Shimada. “One of the general methods is to place a stair at the middle of one room allocating functions on both sides.”

This central floor functions as an open-plan living space, with the slightly raised seating area connected to the kitchen via two small tables.

A small toilet is housed in what looks like a freestanding cupboard.

A second staircase leads down to ground level, descending beneath the dining table and through the top of a wardrobe, with the final steps also containing drawers.

The main bedroom and bathroom are located on this lower floor, either side of the entrance and stairs.

With a slanted roof at one end, the top storey has spare room for an office and guest bedroom plus a small terrace.

Corrugated metal clads the outer walls of the house, which are each set back half a metre from the edge of the plot to comply with Japanese planning regulations for dense urban areas.

Tato Architects also designed public toilets that comprise a single curved wall sheltered beneath a gabled roof and converted a warehouse in Osaka into a house where residents can climb up the walls.

See more Japanese houses »
See more projects by Tato Architects »

Here’s the project description sent to us by the architects:

Widening interspace to utilise

Many of the requests to us for designing a house are accompanied with a prerequisite of ensuring a house for a nuclear family at an extremely subdivided lot, to which we cannot easily apply the manners of architecture having been accumulated for long time in Japan. We repeated trials and errors while designing as we think we are in the formative period for a new manner.

This time was not the exception as well. For this level of density of urban houses, where outer walls of the adjoining houses do not touch each other, the civil law demands 500 millimetres setbacks of outer walls to form interspace of 1000 millimetres in width in-between those.

We have kept thinking if it is used more effectively. In this project, we gave 400 millimetres more setbacks from the boundary line of the north eastern adjacent land. As a result, there was 1400 millimetres wide interspace as a passage, which was 900 millimetres in width from the border of the adjacent plot, utilised by placed an entrance in the middle of the side wall faced to the interspace, which realised to minimise space for routing in the house.

The setback ensured the eave as high as about nine metres avoiding the north side slant line. Non-structural walls were pushed out outward providing space for closets etc. Accordingly, it provided bigger space containing facilities such as a toilet than as it looked from interior space like furniture, which brought ambiguity in perception of space.

Architecture and furniture

When I have the honour of seeing an architect-designed house, I sometimes feel as if design furniture is telling messages. I wonder if it is right to summarise by saying “respect the original space and don’t bring any unnecessary things”, but it seems almost like a strong desire as much as to say not to fill the space with anything does not deserve it. Although I cannot say I don’t have such desire at all, I still aim to create space where a variety of things can be brought in and used in everyday life much more freely.

In this house, architectural elements such as stairs, a laundry space, closets, hand rails and toilets are made as if those are furniture. Except for those, there are only floors. As such, architecture and furniture are mingled and those meanings become relative each other, in which way I keep trying to create freedom in rooms as if all of those are just randomly placed and used by chance.

Like choreography notes

I always think the way of dealing with stairs is important in houses, especially in small ones. One of the general methods is to place a stair at the middle of one room allocating functions on both sides. Although it maximises usable area, it leaves the question if it brings rich spatial experience to live seeing every inch of the house and a stair all the time.

The ceiling of the dining room in this house is 3776 millimetres in height, which is determined to make the space under the staircase landing usable as routing. By making it extremely thin, the rest of the height was divided into 1880 millimetres downward and 1850 millimetres upward. Although those are tight dimensions, you can go through between two layers minding your head.

I think it is favourable for a house to have such a scale of physical bodies. Therefore, the dining table was placed over the stair between the ground floor and the first floor leaving space for residents to pass under it. Bodies appear and disappear under the table as residents go up and down the stair.

Once you slide the entrance door and slip into inside of furniture, you reach under the dining table, where faced to a big wall receiving sun light coming through the south window. You see the white wall softly lit from the north as you step on the small stool. To the second floor, you step on the sofa, furniture like a drawer, and the thin stair. At every steps toward upstairs, light conditions change as the direction and the size of space change. Stairs as choreography for spatial experience of this small, thin space.

Structure

As the site is located in the back of a narrow cul-de-sac and carrying-in by vehicle was limited, the structure with light materials such as 100 by 100 millimetres H steel sections for columns and beams, braces with round bars, 75-millimetre deck plates for the floor construction was applied. Those resulted in reducing the amount of steel materials, and the total construction cost to about as same as that of a wooden house.

The horizontal stiffness of floors was acquired with horizontal bracings of six-millimetre flat bars and 50-millimetre squared tie beams beneath concave parts of the deck plates. Floors on different levels were fixed to the columns at both ends so that the continuity of stiffness between those was still kept.

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Tato Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

This apartment block in Osaka Prefecture by Japanese studio EASTERN Design Office features recessed corner balconies that become incrementally wider towards the roof.

Named Step Tower, the ten-storey building is located within a shopping district in Ibaraki. Buildings here are typically four to five storeys, so EASTERN Design Office added larger openings at the parts of the building with views across the surrounding rooftops.

“The open space of each floor gets wider as the floor level becomes higher, and you can get a wider sky view,” said architects Anna Nakamura and Taiyo Jinno.

The exterior walls are rendered white and feature smooth edges that give a gentle curve to the corners of the balconies, which the architects compare to the hull of a ship.

“It makes you imagine the wave splashes that occur when the bow heads-on through the sea,” they said.

A shop occupies the ground floor of the building, while tiled walls on the side reveal the entrance to apartments on the nine floors above.

The first three floors each contain four one-room apartments, suitable for single occupants, and the six upper floors contain two- and three-bedroom flats designed to accommodate families.

Other housing projects by EASTERN Design Office include a concrete house with slits for windows and a residence punctured by circular holes.

See more architecture by EASTERN Design Office »
See more architecture in Japan »

Photography is by Koichi Torimura.

Read on for a description from EASTERN Design Office:

Step Tower

A stark white ship that sails in the middle of the bustling sea of colours.

The ship floating on the ocean suddenly appears in a shopping centre. It evokes a feeling not of a resort area, but of an exotic corner of a town in some southern country. A feeling of a ship that comes across this area by chance.

It makes you imagine the wave splashes that occur when the bow heads-on through the sea. It is a pencil building of 9.7 metre width and 21.6 metre depth. Big holds are designed for the balconies at the southwest corner. These holes become bigger as the floors go upwards from the bottom. You can have the same image when you look up the bow from under it.

It is simple, neat and clean. You look up the smooth and pure white exterior wall. This reminds you of a cool lifestyle in some southern country, or of being on a trip, and spending days at a tropical land in a quest of change of air.

It is an apartment house for rent built at Ibaraki-city in Osaka, a town with a population of 270,000. This town is not only a residential one, but it is now calling for the development of industrial areas for research and development facilities of universities and industrial firms. Therefore, the population is also increasing as an industrial town. This architecture is built at the shopping district, the centre of this town, which is located in front of the JR station.

It is a building of 10 storeys of RC structure consisting of a tenant space at the first floor, one room apartment houses for singles at 2-4 floors, and 2LDK and 3LDk for families at 5-10 floors.

The surrounding buildings are 4-5 storeys height. So it is not proper to have a big slit (opening section) for this building. The open space of each floor gets wider as the floor level becomes higher, and you can get a wider sky view. This idea is reflected in the design of this building.

Location: Osaka, Japan
Site Area: 384.38 sqm
Total Floor Area: 1,548.85 sqm
Structural Engineering: IHARA STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS
Contractor: Matsumotogumi Co., Ltd

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EASTERN Design Office appeared first on Dezeen.

Wooden chairs were piled on top of one another to create the shelves of this pop-up shop for skincare brand Aesop in a Tokyo shopping centre.

Designed by Aesop creative manager Hiroko Shiratori, the Aesop Midtown Installation created a temporary store for the brand earlier this summer in front of a pair of elevators in the Tokyo Midtown Galleria.

Half of the chairs were turned upside down to create the stacks, which formed the display areas for rows of Aesop’s signature brown bottles.

Quotes from various philosophers were inscribed onto the sides of a few selected chairs, plus some were still used as places to sit.

The space was completed by the addition of a wooden counter and a fully functioning sink.

Dezeen interviewed Aesop founder Dennis Paphitis in 2012 about his brand, which regularly commissions designers to come up with unique concepts for stores. He explained: “I was horrified at the thought of a soulless chain”.

Other interesting branches include a Singapore shop with coconut-husk string hanging from the ceiling and a New York kiosk made from piles of newspapers. See more Aesop stores »

Here’s some extra information from Aesop:

Aesop enjoyed a temporary residence in Tokyo Midtown Galleria from 24 April until late June, 2013.

Designed by Aesop Creative Manager Hiroko Shiratori, the interior employed utilitarian chairs in clever linear assembly to create makeshift walls, borders and shelves.

This transitory Midtown installation complemented the brand’s permanent signature stores in Aoyama, Ginza, Shin-Marunouchi, Yokohama and Shibuya. It offered a complete range of skin, hair and body care, and was fitted with a demonstration sink to facilitate the immersive sensorial experience for which Aesop is renowned.

Hiroko studied at the Royal College of Art and Chelsea College and Tokyo Zokei University. She has exhibited in London, Milan, Cologne and Tokyo and her work has been featured in Wallpaper, Casa Brutus, Domus Web, Axis and similar publications and sites.

Aesop was founded in Melbourne in 1987 and today offers its superlative skin, hair and body care products in more than sixty signature stores internationally. As the company evolves – new stores open soon in Hong Kong, London, and New York – meticulously considered and sophisticated design remain paramount to the creation of each space.

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by Hiroko Shiratori appeared first on Dezeen.

This house in Kanazawa by Japanese architect Takuro Yamamoto is punctuated by a series of interconnecting voids, including a terrace with a shallow reflecting pool (+ slideshow).

The client asked Takuro Yamamoto Architects for a simple building with several outdoor spaces, so the Tokyo-based firm inserted holes into the monolithic structure to create a courtyard and covered parking space on the ground floor, as well as the first floor terrace.

“The connection of voids – we call it Cave – is the theme of this house,” explain the architects, adding that the different voids “serve multiple purposes in order to make up for the space limitations.”

The house’s exterior appears as a plain white volume, with one surface interrupted by an aperture that creates the parking space and a covered entrance passage to protect the owners from the winter snowfall.

This void continues around a corner, where it becomes a secluded courtyard visible from the open plan kitchen and living space through full-height windows.

Views of the “cave” change throughout the day depending on the angle of the sun, and the architects added the shallow pool on the terrace “because we thought water is inseparable from white caves.”

The interconnected outdoor spaces also provide a route for snow to be cleared if it starts to build up in winter.

Takuro Yamamoto Architects previously designed a house in Kashiwa, Japan, around an angled central courtyard that divides the surrounding space into smaller rooms.

Other Japanese houses on Dezeen include one with a facade that looks like a picture frame surrounding a courtyard garden and another simple white cube that resembles a block of tofu. See more Japanese houses »

Cave-like structures have appeared before on Dezeen, including a bathroom showroom by Zaha Hadid and a faceted church hall in Austria. See more caves »

Photography is by Ken’ichi Suzuki.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

White Cave House

White Cave House is a massive lump engraved by a series of voids interconnected in the shape of a kinked tube. The connection of voids – we call it Cave – is the theme of this house.

Internal rooms are designed to enjoy the minimum views of Cave characterized by its whiteness. At the same time, this concept is also the practical solution to realize a courtyard house in Kanazawa city known for heavy snow in Japan.

The client’s original request was a white minimally-designed house with many external spaces, such as a large snow-proof approach to the entrance, a roofed garage for multiple cars, a terrace facing to the sky, and a courtyard.

Though a roofed entrance and a garage are desirable for snowy place, it takes so many floor areas away from the internal rooms for the family, while the space and the budget is limited. In addition, courtyard style itself is not suitable to the snowy country because courtyards would be easily buried under snow.

To solve the problems, we proposed to connect these external spaces to one another with a large single tube, or Cave, and have each part serve multiple purposes in order to make up for the space limitations.

We designed Cave unstraight because it prevents passengers outside from seeing through, though it is not closed. By this arrangement, Cave takes a new turn for each part letting in the sunshine while protecting privacy of the courtyard, the terrace, and the internal rooms.

The family inside can enjoy the view of Cave changing its contrast throughout a day under the sunshine. Cave also serves as a route to remove snow from the external spaces in winter, otherwise you would be at a loss with a lot of snow in the enclosed courtyard.

In order to make Cave deserve its name more, we wondered if we could add the reflection of water to the house because we thought water is inseparable from white caves.

We eventually figured out that the terrace was an appropriate site to place it. The terrace covered by white waterproof FRP holds a thin layer of water like a white basin.

On the terrace reflecting the skyview without obstacles, you may feel that Cave has brought you to another world far from the daily life.

Credits: Takuro Yamamoto Architects
Location: Kanazawa
Use: independent residence
Site area : 493.88m2
Building area : 132.68m2
Total floor area: 172.33m2
Completion: June 2013
Design period: February 2011-September 2012
Construction period: October 2012-June 2013
Structure: Wood
Client: a married couple + a child
Architect: Takuro Yamamoto
Structure design: Yamada Noriaki Structural Design Office
Construction: Ninomiya-Kensetsu

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Takuro Yamamoto Architects appeared first on Dezeen.