Female Architecture of Itsuko Hasegawa

Saturday, August 30, 2008

After graduating from the Department of Architecture at Kanto Gakuin University, Itsuko Hasegawa became a research student in the Department of Architecture at Tokyo Institute of Technology. In 1979 she established Itsuko Hasegawa Atelier. Her projects include a variety of houses and public buildings. In 1986 she received the Design prize from the Architectural Institute of Japan for her Bizan Hall project. Her residential projects also earned a Japan Cultural Design Award. She won first prize in the invited competition for the Shonandai Cultural Center. In 1997 she was elected as one of the Honorary Fellows of the RIBA. She has completed her winning entry for the Niigata City Performing Arts Center and Area Development.

Niigata City Performing Art Center

Itsuko Hasegawa Atelier
I started to like the projects by Itsuko Hasegawa, there are alot of interesting project by this female architect for ex: Yamanshi Museum of Fruit, Shonandai Cultural Center and Niigata City Performing Arts Center . Most of them are very sensitive and creative.
However, it is so hard to look for details about her.

New books on Shelf

Friday, August 29, 2008

Le Corbusier -Le Grand

The barn at Fallingwater by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

Monday, August 25, 2008

The Barn at Fallingwater is an adaptive reuse of a 19th century heavy-timber barn and its 20th century addition, framed in dimension lumber.

The 19th century structure is a bank barn, built into the side of a hill so that two levels can be accessed directly from grade level.

The barn is used by the architect as a -season event venue for receptions and barn dances

The loft space

The loft space has been part of the thermal and moisture barrier system protecting the occupied space on the lower level. This is a green adaptive reuse project adjacent to the Frank Lloyd Wright's fallingwater.

Facade of the building.

Read more about this project at Bohlin Cywinski

AIA awards-top ten green project

Nine boxes by Lebbeus Wood

Friday, August 22, 2008

This project is an occasional project by Lebbeus Wood. He is looking at the most basic element in architecture which is a box as a prime example.

For him, what transform the box actually comes from two factors, the first one is human perception and the second factor is natural forces, for example earthquarke.

Imagine how this nine boxes can be transformed into a city?
other project from Lebbeus Wood

Vernacular meets Contemporary in Chang Yung Ho Chinese Architecture

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

This Beijing-born architect received degrees in environmental design and architecture from U.S. colleges including the University of California, Berkeley. Returning to China in 1993, he established China's first private architectural firm, Atelier FCJZ. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2000 UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts. In 2002 and 2003, he held the Kenzo Tange Chair at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design
Chang himself describes his architecture as “Duchamp marrying a Chinese painting marrying urbanism producing a child that could be called contemporary Chinese architecture
details of Chang Yung Ho

Multifunctional spaces in Jinhua park

Multifunctional spaces in Jinhua park

Pictures from coolbeam

Bamboo Structure in Venice

Bamboo Structure in Venice

A rendering of the Small Museum of Contemporary Art (SMOCA) in Quanzhou. The structure is inspired by two interlocking Chinese courtyard houses.
Courtesy Atelier FCJZ

The renderings for SMOCA, a project done for the artist Cai Guo-Qiang, are interesting in themselves, as they combine a typical architectural computer drawing with a traditional Chinese rice-paper painting.
Courtesy Atelier FCJZ

The Xishu Bookstore (pictured) - sitting in an otherwise banal Beijing industrial block- uses a bicycle as its basic structural influence. Xishu was the first project to draw attention to Ho's firm, Atelier FCJZ.

Photos from Metropolis Magazine

Architect website: Atelier FCJZ

Pocono Environmental Education Center, Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvania (GREEN PROJECT)

Seeds for the Pocono Environ-mental Education Center were sown 40 years ago during protests over a dam that would have turned the site into a reservoir.

Designed to be a “passive solar machine,” the center’s south face is entirely glazed but equipped with a widely overhanging roof to reduce summer solar gain.

The center’s structural system features a concrete post-and-beam system in the rear of the building and V-shaped wood columns up front.

Treads harvested from tires illegally dumped in the surrounding forest provided shingles and a highly tactile exhibit of the sustainability ethos of the center.

The building’s abundant glazing blurs distinctions between inside and out, allowing the public areas to be bathed in natural light.

With offices, bathrooms, and a catering kitchen kept to a single service corridor, the remaining space is a simple clear-span shed.




Text and image from Greensource

Ginzan Onsen Fujiya (Hot spring hotel) by KENGO KUMA

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

my favourite architect works: KENGO KUMA

In reconfiguring a hundred-year-old onsen (hot spring hotel) in Japan’s snow country, architect Kengo Kuma raises such issues, grafting modern elements onto historic roots and giving traditional design strategies contemporary interpretations.

“We wanted to retain the continuity of the old facade while introducing a new spirit and modern amenities,” explains Kuma. To do so, the architect took apart the existing building, then reassembled it using old and new wood members.

He kept the original silhouette and traditional Japanese post-and-beam construction, but inserted larger, wood-framed windows and a new sliding glass entry wall.

“The idea was to connect the street with the lobby inside,” says Kuma. “So we established a new sense of transparency.”

Text and images from architecture record

the common senses in ARCHITECTURE

Monday, August 18, 2008

Human have five senses: tactility, vision, hear, taste, and smell.

Architecture involves all the human senses when the USERS of the building experience the architecture from exterior to interior.

Vision: what you see from the outside of a building might helps you to interpret the spaces inside the building, the light and shadow formed, the openings of plane, the arrangment of furniture.......

Hear: what is the sound you will hear when you stepped on a wooden floor? Or does the sound transfer from one space to another? how materials can affect your hearing?

Smell: the smell of a courtyard, a garden will totally change the ambience of a spaces in a building.

Tactility: the feeling when you touch on certain materials or when u step on special design floor using bare feet.

When you design or talk about architecture, try to think of from the users point of view, their experience through their senses.
Another quote is, " the USERS are the main character in play of Architecture."

Aoki Jun-Mamihira Bridge

Friday, August 15, 2008

This is a bridge in the center of Mamihara, Soyo-machi, which once flourished as a post town. The bridge was designed so that pedestrians coming from the road maintain continuity of experience. However, this is not just a bridge for pedestrian traffic.

The intention was to create a bridge that is a place where people naturally linger.
Toward the middle, the bridge gradually splits into two: the upper level and the lower level. The upper level leads one toward a pair of rocks joined by a sacred rope at the other end of the bridge.

The lower level is a "reverse arched bridge" that dips down toward the river; through two round holes, one can look down on the water. The planks are made of local cedar. The structure is one unified whole made from two surfaces and columns.

Aoki Jun

Elliott + Associates Architects underground project

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Oklahoma City is experiencing a second wind. Having transformed its river from a trickling Army Corps of Engineers drainage ditch into a series of connected lakes that are scullers’ paradises, the Midwestern capital is enjoying an urban renaissance. Now its do-over is moving underground with the reopening of its Conncourse system of pedestrian tunnels, reimagined as a sequence of magnificently saturated zones of color by Elliott + Associates Architects.


the Underground is bathed in American-flag blue and red. Yellow represents the offices of the energy companies overhead, green stands for banking, and fuscia means hospitality.

Although the design of the Underground may look simple, the architects have given users plenty to contemplate. Trios of convex security mirrors, lined vertically, punctuate the galleries. In one hallway, yellow and blue combine along one side so that they overlap and appear white on the opposite wall, about which Elliott says, “There’s a little bit of alchemy here.” Exhibitions of historic photographs also punctuate monotonous stretches. “We want to immerse people in different experiences. Like window shopping in Manhattan, you can find yourself walking six blocks and not realizing it.”

text from architecture record
images from elliott +associates architects

Aquatorium Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA (1993) by SITE

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

This environmental center explores all aspects of water-related science and culture. The concept, entitled "AQUATORIUM," is intended to inspire a profound appreciation of humanity's relationship to the earth's most precious resource.

By means of sight, sound, and touch, the building and its exhibition spaces are designed to tell the story of water and people. Located on top of hill, this new facility is integrated with its circular site as an over and underground experience.

The building is composed of lateral information walls that carry the exhibitions from interior to exterior and fuse with the surrounding topography.

These animated walls divide the sections of the museum into culture, science, habitat, technology, and agriculture, using such exhibit devices as video, water events, virtual reality experiences, gardens, natural phenomena and hands-on displays that explain the value of water in the history of civilization

the architect website: SITE