Half a century ago, architecture became open-ended. Buildings would change and grow, architects argued, not unlike cities. They embraced impermanence, promoted flexibility, timed obsolescence, and welcomed uncertainty.
In Japan, a group of Metabolism architects were also chasing this trend. Among these architects, Fumihiko, who is the favorer of Group Form, is a maverick.
While Maki doesn’t believe in architectural growth under an artificial system through modular units, he welcomes change and revolution in a more organic way.
Therefore, our renovation of his Chiba University Memorial Hall as a one take project, is a way of de-monumentalization of its integrity, which welcomes new possibilities in the future.
Through the history of museums and galleries, the density of artworks in galleries is decreasing, while galleries change their exhibitions more frequently. There is a balance of efficiency and exorbitance in galleries.
The efficiency and exorbitance in art galleries could be specified into time and space. This project combines separate galleries, which could share certain service facilities, while they could still hold their own exhibitions in the individual galleries and carry on the commercial transaction in the private view rooms.
In order to achieve the spatial and temporal efficiency. The methodology we apply is transformable platform, through which the exhibition space could be expanded and compressed, according to the specific curation.
Social housing, originated from the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century when urban population increased dramatically, generally refers to project with the aim of providing affordable housing.
It is an irony that while it is considered as potential remedy to social inequality, it constantly leads to serious issues like concentrated poverty and racial segregation. Trends of an increase in geographic concentration of poverty became evident by the 1970s as high and middle-class residents vacated property in U.S. cities. At that time, although slum clearance created a need to house those displaced, several forces, such as political organizations, suburban communities, resisted the construction of social housing in their neighborhoods. Consequently, such projects were placed around ghetto neighborhoods which already exhibited signs of poverty.
Another indispensible issue is racial segregation. The HUD's The Location and Racial Composition of Public Housing in the United States report found that the racial distribution of residents within individual public housing units tends to be rather homogeneous, with African Americans tending to occupy poor minority neighborhoods. According to the report, more than 40% of public housing occupants live in neighborhoods where majority is African American.
It is not only a reconstruction project, but also a revolution on behalf of student’s desire. The library of Tianjin University was built in the year of 1958, when the most common scene of university students in China is that a student reading quietly and solitarily in the late night library with a dim light. However, today, 57 years after the construction of the library, the reality seems to change a lot. Students can’t just satisfy with the lifeless, storage-like library. What they need is a place that can inspire them, offer them chance to meet and to collaborate.
The main idea of this project is to provide possibilities for a wide variety of activities and emotions, which means a library you can stay in comfortable no matter you are alone or you are with a crowd of people. Library+ is not just a library, it cares about people and their emotions, it makes up part of the campus life.
Florence Cathedral, Basilica di San Pietro and Potala Palace, these traditional architectures give people the chance to get to know the religion and culture behind them. But how to impress people with the power of religion in a more modern way?
In Tibetan Buddhism, life is a samsara. During the journey of life, we will experience all kind of events and feelings including happiness, difficulty and sadness. But we will come back to the place where we begin the journey in the end, with a different state of mind. And this is also the true meaning of Auspicious Knot, an important symbol of Tibetan Buddhism.
The main idea of this project is to combine the meaning of Buddhism with the spatial experience of people and the natural environment. Through the method of folding, the feeling of interweave and continuous can be felt from both the form of the building outside and the one-way tour path inside. With the movements of visitors, different scenes are presented at different places, just like different life experience in the life journey. Finally, the true meaning of metempsychosis in Buddhism is well presented in a modern way.
When the city is speeding up the process of development, we create too many projects that only can be enjoyed by people with certain wealth and status. Many of these projects end up with becoming artworks in glass boxes for people to appreciate, not spaces for people to stay and to live.
The Tainan Museum of Fine Art is a project like this. It seems to ignore the hard but vivid life that local people lead in the old houses, hidden in the alleys nearby. Compared with the art in a gorgeous box, the life of people is more like true art.
This project is an irony of the construction of ‘Art Museum’. The project includes two parts. At present, it is an info box which attempts to make an entrance for alleys and create a chance for outsiders to encounter with the real life. In the future, it is a proposal which stimulates the spontaneous renovation of alleyway.
Temporary as contemporary. Sometimes, architecture should be like a narrator of the world.
As a typical industrial town of China, the old town Jiyuan is facing the same problem just like many other industrial cities. Abandoned factory, closed community and poor living condition. Is it possible for the city to be activated again?
This is an urban regeneration project which aims at rebuilding both the structure of construction and economy. By finding and recalling the characteristics of local culture, we reactive the community as a cultural creative district with a theme of mountain. With the new element of art industry and mountain-tourism, a more open community is created, the facilities of this area will be improved, and the traditional community will become a new public center of Jiyuan.
What is the world going to be like in the future? Will there be more skyscrapers, more metropolis and more lifeless people chasing fame and gain? Will people still have the enthusiasm to appreciate the beautiful details of their lives?
Water Skyscape is a proposal that creates a retroactive space over rooftops of Manhattan. In the face of crampled public space between all the skyscrapers, it offers a new public space which breaks up the inherent isolation between blocks, and also provides a transparent penetrative system which stores and recycles rain water.
The project attempts to bring back the natural essence to metropolitan life, and recover what has been lost a long time ago: A spacious area full of unexpectancy and potencial.
