Winners of the 2012 ar+d Emerging Awards
26/11/2012.
By The Architectural Review [LONDON] UK
metalocus, INÉS LALUETA
metalocus, INÉS LALUETA
Optical Glass House, Hiroshima, Japan
'Should we wish to lift our culture to a higher level, then we are obliged, for better or worse, to transform our architecture. We shall only succeed in doing this when we remove the element of enclosure from the rooms in which we live. We can only do this, however, with glass architecture, which allows the light of the sun, moon, and stars to enter not merely through a few windows set in the wall’
Paul Scheerbart, Glasarchitektur, 19141
The aspiration to create a crystalline architecture has long inspired architects in the modern era. From Bruno Taut’s Glashaus at the 1914 German Werkbund Exhibition, to Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre, to Kengo Kuma’s Water/Glass House (AR March 2000), glass has had the transformative power to shape space, as it is technically both a solid and liquid with extremely high viscosity. The glass house has once again been ingeniously reinvented through the use of an optical glass facade by Hiroshi Nakamura.
In the decade since working for Kengo Kuma, Nakamura has continued his mentor’s pursuit of ‘particle-ised’ architecture through his hypersensitivity toward materials based on a ‘microscopic designing methodology’.2 His first independent commission was the Lanvin boutique in Tokyo’s high-fashion district of Ginza in which its steel-plate facade was punctured with 3,000 acrylic cylinders that animate the interior with shimmering dots of natural light.
NOTES.-
1. Paul Scheerbart, Glasarchitektur, Der Sturm Verlag, 1914; Rogner & Bernhard, 1971, p25.
2. Hiroshi Nakamura, Microscopic Designing Methodology INAX Publishing, 2010.
Hiroshi Nakamura. Born in Tokyo, 1974. Completed the Master Course, Department of Architecture, Graduated from the University of Meiji with M.Architecture Degree, 1999. Chief engineer in Kengo Kuma&Associates, 1999-2002. Established First Class Architect Office / Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP Co., Ltd. / Currently this office representative director, 2002.
Awards. Grand Prize, JCD Design Award 2006 / Grand Prize, GOOD DESIGN AWARD 2008 / ShinKenchiku Award 2010 / Design Vanguard 2010 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD TOP 10 architect in the world (USA).
Works. Dancing trees Singing birds, House C, Roku museum.
Publishing. Microscopic Designing Methodology (INAX Publishing) / Love in Architecture(ASCII) / Reading Skills of Architects(TOTO).