On Hong Kong's waterfront and amid a myriad of skyscrapers and luxurious retail spaces at K11 MUSEA, rise a golden installationthe, the KUBE designed by OMA / David Gianotten and Rem Koolhaas and commissioned by K11 Group founder Adrian Cheng.
“The KUBE is a multi-functional installation to connect people visiting K11 MUSEA and passers-by, who share a moment to be fully present to experience the city, and possibilities of encounters.”
David Gianotten, OMA Managing Partner – ArchitecT.
 
A golden cube and a giant floating balloon, the distinctive installation located in front of K11 MUSEA —a ten-storey retail space designed to blend cultural experiences and commerce, and designed as a compact, multi-functional installation: at once a kiosk, an outdoor seating area and an event space.
 
“In creating K11 MUSEA, we have worked with 100 creative talents to propagate culture and inject inspiring content into the new consumer’s daily life. What David Gianotten and Rem Koolhaas’ KUBE adds to K11 MUSEA is therefore more than an iconic OMA feature, but a symbolic space that explores Hong Kong’s waterfront culture, coffee culture and a new way to become part of a larger community.”
Adrian Cheng, K11 Group Founder.
 

Project description by OMA

The KUBE, designed by OMA / David Gianotten and Rem Koolhaas and commissioned by K11 Group founder Adrian Cheng, opens in Hong Kong. Comprised of a golden cube and a giant floating balloon, the distinctive installation located in front of K11 MUSEA—a unique place in the city for retail and culture—enlivens the iconic Victoria Harbour with diverse happenings.

The KUBE is at once a kiosk, an outdoor seating area and an event space, distinguished from the retail and commercial spaces at the waterfront. The golden cube houses the artisan coffee brewer %ARABICA. Its anodised aluminium finish changes colours when light of different qualities reflects from it, offering visitors unique scenes at different times of the day. The golden cube is accompanied with a set of stone cubes that serve as outdoor chairs and tables, configured in such a way to encourage serendipitous conversations between visitors. The setting creates possibilities for different events—such as outdoor performances with a harbourview—to inject cultural programmes into K11 MUSEA and Victoria Dockside, the city’s latest art and design neighbourhood.

For special events, a giant red balloon, visible from across the Victoria Harbour, is installed as a “city canopy” to gather all participants under the same roof, and as an “urban pin” to mark the KUBE as a place in the city for inspiring encounters.

K11 MUSEA is a collective effort of 100 architects, artists, designers and other creative talents. Dubbed “Hong Kong’s Silicon Valley of Culture,” K11 MUSEA has the mission to connect people and propagate culture, opening up dialogues between the local community, shoppers, and travellers. Its unique cultural offerings include a specially curated art collection of over forty contemporary artworks and weekly cultural performances.

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Architects
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OMA. The project is led by David Gianotten, Rem Koolhaas and Ken Fung.
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Collaborators
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Project management.- K11 MUSEA. Façade consultant.- Front. Structure consultant.- BuroHappold. Lighting.- Inhabit
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Client
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K11 MUSEA
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Dates
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2019
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Photography
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Rem Koolhaas was born in Rotterdam in 1944. He began his career as a journalist, working for the Haagse Post, and as a set-designer in the Netherlands and Hollywood. He beganHe frequented the Architectural Association School in London and studied with Oswald Mathias Ungers at Cornell University. In 1978, he wrote Delirious New York: a retroactive manifesto for Manhattan, which has become a classic of contemporary architectural theory. In 1975 – together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp – he founded OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture).

The most important works by Koolhaas and OMA, from its foundation until the mid-1990s, include the Netherlands Dance Theatre at The Hague, the Nexus Housing at Fukuoka in Japan, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the Grand Palais of Euralille and Lille, the Villa dall’Ava, the Très Grande Bibliothèque, the Jussieu library in Paris, the ZKM in Karlsruhe and the Seattle Public Library.

Together with Koolhaas’s reflections on contemporary society, these buildings appear in his second book, S,M,L,XL (1995), a volume of 1376 pages written as though it were a “novel about architecture”. Published in collaboration with the Canadian graphic designer, Bruce Mau, the book contains essays, manifestos, cartoons and travel diaries.

In 2005, with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman, he was the founder to the prestigious Volume magazine, the result of a collaboration with Archis (Amsterdam), AMO and C-lab (Columbia University NY).

His built work includes the Qatar National Library and the Qatar Foundation Headquarters (2018), Fondation Galeries Lafayette in Paris (2018), Fondazione Prada in Milan (2015/2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), the headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing (2012), Casa da Musica in Porto (2005), Seattle Central Library (2004), and the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin (2003). Current projects include the Taipei Performing Arts Centre, a new building for Axel Springer in Berlin, and the Factory in Manchester.

Koolhaas directed the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale and is a professor at Harvard University, where he directs The Project on the City, a research programme on changes in urban conditions around the world. This programme has conducted research on the delta of the Pearl River in China (entitled Great Leap Forward) and on consumer society (The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping). Taschen Verlag has published the results. Now is preparing a major exhibition for the Guggenheim museum to open in 2019 entitled Countryside: Future of the World.

Among the awards he has won in recent years, we mention here the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize (2000), the Praemium Imperiale (2003), the Royal Gold Medal (2004) and the Mies Van Der Rohe prize (2005). In 2008, Time mentioned him among the 100 most influential people of the planet.

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Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. AMO, a research and design studio, applies architectural thinking to domains beyond. OMA is led by eight partners – Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and Managing Partner-Architect David Gianotten – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. OMA-designed buildings currently under construction are the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, The Factory in Manchester, Hangzhou Prism, the CMG Times Center in Shenzhen and the Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux.

OMA’s completed projects include Taipei Performing Arts Centre (2022), Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles (2020), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), MEETT Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Centre (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip (2020), nhow RAI Hotel in Amsterdam (2020), a new building for Brighton College (2020), and Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020). Earlier buildings include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), De Rotterdam (2013), CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Casa da Música in Porto (2005), and the Seattle Central Library (2004).

AMO often works in parallel with OMA's clients to fertilize architecture with intelligence from this array of disciplines. This is the case with Prada: AMO's research into identity, in-store technology, and new possibilities of content-production in fashion helped generate OMA's architectural designs for new Prada epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 2004, AMO was commissioned by the European Union to study its visual communication, and designed a colored "barcode" flag, combining the flags of all member states, which was used during the Austrian presidency of the EU. AMO has worked with Universal Studios, Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Heineken, Ikea, Condé Nast, Harvard University and the Hermitage. It has produced Countryside: The Future, a research exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, including Public Works (2012), Cronocaos (2010), and The Gulf (2006); and for Fondazione Prada, including When Attitudes Become Form (2012) and Serial and Portable Classics (2015). AMO, with Harvard University, was responsible for the research and curation of the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale and its publication Elements. Other notable projects are Roadmap 2050, a plan for a Europe-wide renewable energy grid; Project Japan, a 720-page book on the Metabolism architecture movement (Taschen, 2010); and the educational program of Strelka Institute in Moscow.

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David Gianotten is the Managing Partner – Architect of OMA globally, responsible for the overall organizational and financial management, business strategy, and growth of the company in all markets, in addition to his own architectural portfolio.

As Partner-in-Charge, David currently oversees the design and construction of various projects including the Taipei Performing Arts Centre; the Prince Plaza Building in Shenzhen; the KataOMA resort in Bali; the New Museum for Western Australia in Perth; the masterplan of Rotterdam’s Feyenoord City and the design of the new 63,000 seat Stadium Feijenoord; and Amsterdam’s Bajes Kwartier, a conversion of a large 1960s prison complex into a new neighborhood with 1,350 apartments.

David led the design and realization of the MPavilion 2017 in Melbourne and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange headquarters. He was also responsible for the end stages of the CCTV headquarters in Beijing. David’s work has been published worldwide and several of his projects have received international awards, including the 2017 Melbourne Design Awards and the CTBUH Awards in 2013. David gives lectures around the world mainly related to his projects and on topics such as the future development of the architectural profession, the role of context within projects, and speed and risk in architecture.

David joined OMA in 2008, launched OMA's Hong Kong office in 2009, and became partner in 2010. He became OMA’s global Managing Partner – Architect in 2015 upon his return to the Netherlands after having led OMA’s portfolio in Asia for seven years. Before joining OMA, he was Principal Architect at SeARCH in the Netherlands.

David studied Architecture and Architectural Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology, where he has also served as a professor in the Architectural Urban Design and Engineering department since 2016. Additionally, he serves on the board of the Netherlands Asia Honors Summer School.

 
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