© Toshihiro Sobajima

• Architects: Kazuyuki Takeda
• Location: Honkomagome, Bunkyo, Tokyo 113-0021, Japan
• Area: 100.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Toshihiro Sobajima

• Collaborators: Souraku Architects

© Toshihiro Sobajima

Self-build for public

There is the vacant house which has formed local community. “House of Komajii” in Komagome of Tokyo opened as a place where local people stay in October, 2013. Because originally this vacant house was a dormitory, the space was divided finely. Therefore about half of the building was a storeroom. When I received the request of the design, The client expected that I released the space of the storeroom in the area, and made the structure for “House of Komajii” to become independent, and rotate. (It is run now without almost taking the fee for use by the kindness of the owner.) I plan to break a wall and enlarge the space, and more people can gather in the first floor and convert the second floor to share office as source of profits.

© Toshihiro Sobajima

I visited the building several times before beginning design. The state of the building was bad and the outdoor stairs got rusty and died, and the finish of the inner wall had come off. But many people gathered in such the building for some reason. It is the place that everybody can spend from a neighboring child to the elderly freely. It sometimes overflows with a person so that there’s no place to stand in. The community has formed spontaneously by the owner releasing the vacant house in the area. I think the scene like that the community was formed by people gathering for TV in old times when there was only one TV in the town is near that. It is not the “made” public that the government provides administratively, but the new public by “self-build” of citizen.

© Toshihiro Sobajima

Plan 1

© Toshihiro Sobajima

Plan 2

I collected all the expenses of the renovation from a local user. In addition, I had local people participate in DIY, and the thought of the individual has been left to the building. And I gave priority to that I enlarged the space without spending money. Therefore the things of the different character are simultaneous in one space, for example the rough space that was only dismantled, the Japanese-style room which was just left, newly finished white wall, the old fixtures which I transferred and reused, the pillar that the heights of children were carved , the switchplate which a neighboring foreign student made with cardboard, the signboard which grandfather of the owner handcrafted, and ranma which an old craftsman made. I mix such different things without order and aim at letting them exist in a natural state. I design the architecture which does not make “made” feeling by accumulation of the “self-build” of many people.

© Toshihiro Sobajima

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© Peter Clarke

• Architects: Jackson Clements Burrows
• Location: College Cres, Keysborough VIC 3173, Australia
• Area: 3700.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2014
• Photographs: Peter Clarke

• Builder: Lend Lease
• Structural: ARUP
• Services Consultant: SKM-S2FF
• Acoustic: Marshal Day

© Peter Clarke

From the architect. The project involved the redevelopment of three tired 1980s buildings at Monash University’s Clayton campus.  The intention was to establish new informal and engaging learning hubs within the three buildings and to clarify campus wayfinding by creating new pedestrian ‘walks’.

© Peter Clarke

JCB’s response was to reinforce the main campus intersection with a formal gesture incorporating folding and twisting concrete canopies, a theatrical stair and seating platforms. The canopies provide shelter, entrance identity and a dramatic engagement with the student realm, allowing for moments of congregation, observation and contemplation from the vantage of the stair.

1st Floor Plan

2nd Floor Plan

3rd Floor Plan

Themed interiors and informal furniture with complimentary material selections were used to de-institutionalise the interior spaces. The Student Services Desk is sculptural in form, eliminating the traditional linear counter anticipated within this type of facility.

© Peter Clarke

A variety of work tables were designed for self-directed study or collaborative activities. Writable surfaces throughout encourage group learning. Throughout the building, visual links to the surrounding landscape and walks are maximized.

The upper floor schemes took the existing layout of a central corridor with perimeter offices and turned it inside out; open plan office areas, meeting rooms and ancillary spaces have been arranged in bays through the centre of the plan while the new circulation spaces run along the north and south facades, creating break-out spaces and informal seating areas along the perimeter.

© Peter Clarke

The new facades were developed as a colourful ‘kit of parts’ to address solar shading, building identity and transparency.  Mild steel shading loops and coloured fins were used to enliven and reinforce the existing structural rhythms of the buildings while the external colour scheme across the precinct sought to both reflect and abstract the surrounding landscape. 

© Peter Clarke

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© Peter Clarke

• Architects: Jackson Clements Burrows
• Location: College Cres, Keysborough VIC 3173, Australia
• Area: 3700.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2014
• Photographs: Peter Clarke

• Builder: Lend Lease
• Structural: ARUP
• Services Consultant: SKM-S2FF
• Acoustic: Marshal Day

© Peter Clarke

From the architect. The project involved the redevelopment of three tired 1980s buildings at Monash University’s Clayton campus.  The intention was to establish new informal and engaging learning hubs within the three buildings and to clarify campus wayfinding by creating new pedestrian ‘walks’.

© Peter Clarke

JCB’s response was to reinforce the main campus intersection with a formal gesture incorporating folding and twisting concrete canopies, a theatrical stair and seating platforms. The canopies provide shelter, entrance identity and a dramatic engagement with the student realm, allowing for moments of congregation, observation and contemplation from the vantage of the stair.

1st Floor Plan

2nd Floor Plan

3rd Floor Plan

Themed interiors and informal furniture with complimentary material selections were used to de-institutionalise the interior spaces. The Student Services Desk is sculptural in form, eliminating the traditional linear counter anticipated within this type of facility.

© Peter Clarke

A variety of work tables were designed for self-directed study or collaborative activities. Writable surfaces throughout encourage group learning. Throughout the building, visual links to the surrounding landscape and walks are maximized.

The upper floor schemes took the existing layout of a central corridor with perimeter offices and turned it inside out; open plan office areas, meeting rooms and ancillary spaces have been arranged in bays through the centre of the plan while the new circulation spaces run along the north and south facades, creating break-out spaces and informal seating areas along the perimeter.

© Peter Clarke

The new facades were developed as a colourful ‘kit of parts’ to address solar shading, building identity and transparency.  Mild steel shading loops and coloured fins were used to enliven and reinforce the existing structural rhythms of the buildings while the external colour scheme across the precinct sought to both reflect and abstract the surrounding landscape. 

© Peter Clarke

http://ift.tt/2b6VvDg

Courtesy of Architensions

New-York-based studio Architensions has released the design for its shortlisted project, Rising Ryde, for the Ryde Civic Center in Sydney, Australia. In an effort to embrace local communities and contexts, the project is conceived as a hill-shaped building covered in local vegetation and it aims to prioritize people through its complex system of social connections and interactions with nature.

As an open spatial system, the project “aggregates its micro-cells to the macro scale of the city,” and allows its users to define the use of its space, particularly via a circulation system that is “intertwined with the space that serves as a primary usable social condenser with its intricate succession of public plazas and vertical gardens.”

Courtesy of Architensions

Instead of creating boundaries, the Center furthermore “multiplies the interstitial space” through transparent and semi-transparent curtain walls. This openness allows the building to appear as a protective device and shading system for urban life, rather than a physically imposing mass.

Courtesy of Architensions

Similarly, the local vegetation and trees compliment the project as an extension of the local environment and the hill that rises along Parkes Street.

Courtesy of Architensions

The building will be organized as a micro-city with a multi-level density, intertwining residential, office, garden, and other programs in clusters.

Courtesy of Architensions

Learn more about the project here.

News via Architensions.

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The Hall of Remembrance. Image Courtesy of Sanchit Arora of RENESA ARCHITECTURE DESIGN INTERIORS STUDIO

The relationship that humans have with death is complex and ever-changing, this is inevitably reflected in the architecture of spaces related to death. To interrogate the contemporary role of these spaces, architect Sanchit Arora of Indian firm Renesa Architecture Design Interiors used his thesis work, “The Shadow Spaces; Invisible Sacred Landscapes of Indian Cities” to analyze the place of crematoriums within Indian society. 

After a qualitative analysis, Arora has proposed an extension to the Green Park Crematorium in South Delhi. With this project, he aims to provide an example of an architecture which marries poetry and functionality to create spaces which are respectful, experiential, and user-friendly.

Arora speculates that the decline of ritualistic practices associated with death has seen crematoriums lose their “sanctity.” Whilst the spaces are frequented daily by a number of visitors, the lack of maintenance and consideration for the user has resulted in perfunctory architecture which is “without any sensitivity and respect”.  

Within Delhi, zoning defines the use of the 50-55 crematoriums in operation. Their proximity to nallahs (the streams that run through the city) reflects the Hindu ritual to have a water body at the site, whereas the green areas that often lie adjacent become buffers, isolating the sites from their context.

Crematorium location plan. Image Courtesy of Sanchit Arora of RENESA ARCHITECTURE DESIGN INTERIORS STUDIO

Bird's eye view of the site. Image Courtesy of Sanchit Arora of RENESA ARCHITECTURE DESIGN INTERIORS STUDIO

Arora situated his intervention at the Green Park Crematorium as of the four he investigated in depth, it was the most underutilized. By understanding the spatial periphery of the site, Arora was able to determine a series of macro and micro scales which would better integrate the isolated site into the cityscape. 

The Electric Crematorium. Image Courtesy of Sanchit Arora of RENESA ARCHITECTURE DESIGN INTERIORS STUDIO

The new program is distributed in a way that establishes a series of linkages between the existing and new architecture. The flow and transparency of these spaces was of vital importance, to ensure that an “invisible landscape” was in place to guide mourners in the most sensitive way possible. 

A series of rough sketches depicting the physical manifestation of the emotions ,narrations and sanctity of the space. Image Courtesy of Sanchit Arora of RENESA ARCHITECTURE DESIGN INTERIORS STUDIO

According to Arora, ‘The Shadow Spaces’ observes and remedies issues related to all stated inadequacies, taking instead a holistic approach that considers physical, metaphysical, emotional, and spiritual notions.

The Funeral Space. Image Courtesy of Sanchit Arora of RENESA ARCHITECTURE DESIGN INTERIORS STUDIO

The Shadow Spaces has been designed as a conceptual intervention, with the intention of submitting some of the plans to the Indian Government. 

• Architects: RENESA Architecture Design Interiors Studio
• Location: Green Park, New Delhi, Delhi, India
• Design Lead: Sanchit Arora
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Courtesy of Sanchit Arora of RENESA ARCHITECTURE DESIGN INTERIORS STUDIO

News via RENESA ARCHITECTURE DESIGN INTERIORS STUDIO.

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