i like the toyo ito project. it reminds me of what would happen if you took denari, servo, and thesis time at sci-arc and made a sandwich, although i mean this in a completely non-pejorative way.
although the common denominator of his projects may fall pretty far from his best work, like the sendai mediatheque, i appreciate that he is consistantly evolving, and in the last few years even pushing the envelope. he may even achieve a gehry-esque career arc, although in ito's case hopefully the iconic projects will come without the apparent formal stagnation at f.o.g's office. i think the overall stylistic and conceptual diversity of his work makes the misses, like yatsushiro- worthwhile.
if zaha’s project were a thing i found on the sidewalk, i don’t think i would touch it. but i would go find my friends and show them.
i've always liked ito and his work (well, not so much the early stuff), but recently he is pushing in interesting ways.
i think this is because ito is ok with letting other people do their thang in his projects. cecil balmond is absolutely taking ito places he wouldn't have gone on his own...don't know about this one but if it ain't cec it is def matsuro sasaki, which amounts to the same thing...
very true Javier, his writing on Sejima's work (i think “The Garden of microchips.†In: Any, 1994 Mar.-Apr., v.1, n.5, p.16-17. It's a big blue periodical with a kwinter article called 'the hammer and the song') is indicative of his operational use of diagrammatic architecture - he refers to the plan as a feedback mechanism.
but his recent work tends towards the articulation of form through a literal translation of natural phenomena. he sketched seaweed for the sendai mediatheque, and uses tree profiles (not bifurcation or branching, but a tree shape) for the facade treatment of the tod's building. Analogy is a useful tool to generate ideas, but nature as metaphor, and not even done in a rigorous way, is quite strange. I would like to hear more about it, as his designs always 'become' compelling in its execution.
nappy, did she not give you an adequate tip or something? You could say that it has no scalar fitness (the 'loose' envelope) or that it's form isn't developed beyond its gesture. i don't think she's stupid at all. A degree in maths demonstrates to me an ability to think well into the abstract.
I have not cared for much of Ito's work, but occasionally when I see it built I prove my first opinion wrong. So while this looks like a box with blobby things in the center that someone took a bb gun to, I'll hold off on my final opinion until something is built (or maybe some decent renderings.
claus en kaan's project is also very good. the applied pattern is beautiful, at least in the renderings.
ito seldom talks about the theory of his work, i suppose because it is not taught here really, not in the way westerners are used to, which can be a good thing.
i translated an article for him a few years back when he had just finished sendai, explaining the meaning of the place and it all more or less came down to the building being inhabited. i was very impressed by the lack of doublespeak, the complete absence of [http://www.archinect.com/schoolblog/entry.php?id=32374_0_39_0_C]this kind of nonsense[/url]...
yes the form came from a brainwave about seaweed, and then he went to see sasaki and they worked out a way to make it work, but that idea was just a beginning, not the end, or A end. same with the Tod building, where the really important thing is that he didn't use traditional column or beam at all, but let the facade take over the work in a rather smart way. no one cares here that it looks like a tree, they are just thinking 'shit i don't have to use those fucking big columns and beams anymore?'. really the engineering is brilliant.
that tree thing by the way was not ito's brainwave but one of his staff, all of whom are given the chance to present their ideas during an in-house competition for the project. his own version was more traditional, but he could see the young gun's work was better and stepped aside (at least that is the anecdote from someone who works there). i love that sort of thing and it is part of why i admire him. more cool is that when that young feller leaves the office ito will support him with projects and introductions. def not the way it works back home in canada...
so...ito rocks.
and i like the crazy wobbly lava-lamp in a box thang. it absolutely stands out amongst the others.
I agree the structure of Ito's work is great - that's what I was referring to about it be so different built.
ferd- no, I believe that if you do photoreal renderings you will more or less know what the space will really look like. Imho, this was one of the largest downfalls of the blob era - they never tested their forms and left the renderings to Maya's default plastic-like material.
If you do an accurate rendering (accurate sun, materials, camera, etc.) then you can come pretty damn close to what it will really look like. If someone wants to understand how a space will 'feel', there is no better way short of making the building.
It's all something too many architect's shy away from in favor of more abstract renderings (which I love, more so than any photoreal, but to 'test' the space you need reality).
ito's tie is pretty bad. the guy with the scarf/cravat look is entertaining
jump, i would say that theory in japan had a unique moment with metabolism using organic principles in urban theory: tokyo bay would be the culmination. This, of course, was untenable and failed in its manifestations. There's also an interesting article by Christopher Alexander's a CIty is not a Tree, 1965. http://www.rudi.net/bookshelf/classics/city/alexander/alexander1.shtml
there are some theorists like kakutani (who's theory is really opaque - is it the translation?), but my thought is japanese theory as an end-of-history, 19th C aesthetic theory is not considered important nor pursued as a discourse with european ideas. They don't make-up words like 'non-linear oceanic ear-balls' (that post is a goood read although hasselhof should be thankful then, that he isn't in MSAAD or AA) to carry their work.
what i like in Ito is his spirit of collaboration (with sasaki, ikeda, balmond) so that the emerging product is evolved. Haven't seen tod's; is it so structurally interesting? Is the eccentrically loaded frame made that much richer by thicker trunks reducing to thin branches (which looks rhetorical - the members wouldn't be so large)?
don't lie.... :]
snowi, interesting that you bring up metabolism as i am doing phd in the lab of one of its founders (maki fumihiko, whose chair/position is now filled by hidetoshi ohno, his chosen successor), so it comes up during discussions fairly often; especially with the foreign students.
chris alexander had it right (as far as i can tell, for the only time in his life) with that article which is really brilliant. but metabolism was never so accepted here anyway in the dogmatic way modernism was or new urbanism is in the usa. japanese theory isn't that confident (maki left the group early btw). and in studio Theory of that sort really never comes up. instead the students talk about program, or about how to make a clever form, and that is more than enough to be getting on with. i guess it is a kind of theory of the pragmatic.
on the other hand the thing that makes rem so interesting is that he has sort of come out of the other side of theory in the same way that mies went thorugh classicism, so it still tinges his work in interesting ways that aren't discussed. contrast that with ito, sejima, and al and we are stuck with interesting work that is in the end a one-liner. very very nice, but not much content in the end.
I think this works in japan because the culture here is about people inhabiting space rather than architecture defining it, but it leaves things a bit dry...even so the lack of justification for japanese architecture remains wonderfully fresh for me...
as far as the structure goes, man it is hard to descibe the frustration of dealing with buildings here where space is at a premium and the beams and columns have to be so damnedly large to take the earthquake forces through shear BIGNESS. That beam and column can be the skin (and the aesthetic) offers a glimmer of freedom, even if it is slightly overcooked.
Prada was maybe the first to do it well (and it IS better), but tods is quite alright. the interior btw sucks big time and was memorable only for its furniture (which has been covered up because the fabric was staining its users with purple dye).
not the same approach to structure as tod's but i like this one by ito a bit more...it is the mikimoto shop in ginza.
funny thing about alexander - he was the first to receive a phD from the arch department of harvard, and never burned so brightly afterwards..
interesting point about earthquake design - must be very constraining. is that why Ando's omotesando building looks like solid concrete? i prefer the aging boxes that were originally there compared to that juggernaut. as for the mikimoto (what is it with the high-end retailers-as-patrons in Japan?) check out the aborted schrager hotel by oma/hdem
and look about 5 posts down. This, compounded with the failure of the whitney and lacma, sent rem running for the east.
I do agree about the sensibility of space in japan, and i wonder that they see things in detail or object, and less on spatial organization. I hate to generalize so broadly, but have never seen such beauty and attention on the finite, and less attention on large-scale relationships. Again, this is only in urban conditions in tokyo, kyoto (which is even worse - temples beside office towers), osaka
regarding ito's more continual searching for newness (compared to gehry in the post above), a number of you have assumed this taichung opera house comp. winner is the projecct in the recent a+u, but wasn;t that in fact a performance center in ghent belgium that happened to be this same exact spatial schema, with a curvy vs. boxy perimeter...that said I do think ito's work to be some of the most intriguing around -- aside from those silly spiralling surface/snail shell thingies in the a+u...
i don't think ito's conceptual model is anything orginial..
he or his team def got idea from Dagmar Richter's works in non-standard architecture exhibition. i respect a lot of ito's other works though.
not sure where it comes from. feels a bit like the 70's metabolist stuff to me. good chance that the engineer had a lot more to do with it than ito did...or maybe one of his younger staff...
snowi,
hah man i didn't realise it till you pointed it out but the ginza building is exactly the unrealised rem and stimpy building. ito did something similar with another building a few years ago, where the window as confetti thing was present but not the main theme, so i was thinking of it coming from there...
you are exactly right about small scale and large. all the attention is on getting the small stuff right and the urban scale is left to deal with itself haphazardly. personally i am happy for that to be the case. tokyo will never be a frozen disney-like city a la paris at least. it will never be as nice either, but i can live with that...;-)
ando's omotesando project (the long one that replaces a really nice old public housing project) unfortunately doesn't have the excuse of structural requirements for looking like a brick shithouse. it is just an example of plain old bad design.
Feb 14, 06 8:20 pm ·
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Toyo Ito Rules
More amazing work here.
thanks for that, interesting stuff and you're so right, his work is really cool.
I am in love
I like Zaha's too though
crazy
not sure if it's cool or I should be scared
scary. he thinks nature is an objective concept.
I love this shot. Zaha's evil empire looks poised to annihilate Chien’s pristine utopia.
is it just me, or are zaha's sections mindnumbingly ordinary?
like a bidet?
I really dislike Zaha's work.
And yes that Toyo Ito project is amazing. I've been trying to find the A+u magazine with that project in it for a while now..it's sold out.
Zaha's project reminds me of that evil lady from the little mermaid.
i`d bookmarked this-
http://www.tmoh.com.tw/html/first_prize_design-e.html
i like the toyo ito project. it reminds me of what would happen if you took denari, servo, and thesis time at sci-arc and made a sandwich, although i mean this in a completely non-pejorative way.
although the common denominator of his projects may fall pretty far from his best work, like the sendai mediatheque, i appreciate that he is consistantly evolving, and in the last few years even pushing the envelope. he may even achieve a gehry-esque career arc, although in ito's case hopefully the iconic projects will come without the apparent formal stagnation at f.o.g's office. i think the overall stylistic and conceptual diversity of his work makes the misses, like yatsushiro- worthwhile.
if zaha’s project were a thing i found on the sidewalk, i don’t think i would touch it. but i would go find my friends and show them.
The toyo Ito project is just awesome..and the process is awesome too yall need to check out A+U's issue on toyo ito!
Damn chameleon thanks for the link
zaha's design really sucks and is stupid.
i've always liked ito and his work (well, not so much the early stuff), but recently he is pushing in interesting ways.
i think this is because ito is ok with letting other people do their thang in his projects. cecil balmond is absolutely taking ito places he wouldn't have gone on his own...don't know about this one but if it ain't cec it is def matsuro sasaki, which amounts to the same thing...
zaha totally underwhelms on this one sadly.
very true Javier, his writing on Sejima's work (i think “The Garden of microchips.†In: Any, 1994 Mar.-Apr., v.1, n.5, p.16-17. It's a big blue periodical with a kwinter article called 'the hammer and the song') is indicative of his operational use of diagrammatic architecture - he refers to the plan as a feedback mechanism.
but his recent work tends towards the articulation of form through a literal translation of natural phenomena. he sketched seaweed for the sendai mediatheque, and uses tree profiles (not bifurcation or branching, but a tree shape) for the facade treatment of the tod's building. Analogy is a useful tool to generate ideas, but nature as metaphor, and not even done in a rigorous way, is quite strange. I would like to hear more about it, as his designs always 'become' compelling in its execution.
nappy, did she not give you an adequate tip or something? You could say that it has no scalar fitness (the 'loose' envelope) or that it's form isn't developed beyond its gesture. i don't think she's stupid at all. A degree in maths demonstrates to me an ability to think well into the abstract.
I have not cared for much of Ito's work, but occasionally when I see it built I prove my first opinion wrong. So while this looks like a box with blobby things in the center that someone took a bb gun to, I'll hold off on my final opinion until something is built (or maybe some decent renderings.
i'm a little biased cause i used to work for claus en kaan....... but the design that zaha submitted is bullshit!
garbage building sections. little to no relationship between her lava-like forms and the actual spaces of the buildings.....
keep to the paintings and the world will be better off, ms. hadid.
although boxes are by no means new.....this whole blobby wob garbage went out a long time ago, or so i thought. its total garbage.
trace-the "decent rendering" are the last way to really judge how good, or not so good that these blob structures will be. wouldn't you agree?
claus en kaan's project is also very good. the applied pattern is beautiful, at least in the renderings.
ito seldom talks about the theory of his work, i suppose because it is not taught here really, not in the way westerners are used to, which can be a good thing.
i translated an article for him a few years back when he had just finished sendai, explaining the meaning of the place and it all more or less came down to the building being inhabited. i was very impressed by the lack of doublespeak, the complete absence of [http://www.archinect.com/schoolblog/entry.php?id=32374_0_39_0_C]this kind of nonsense[/url]...
yes the form came from a brainwave about seaweed, and then he went to see sasaki and they worked out a way to make it work, but that idea was just a beginning, not the end, or A end. same with the Tod building, where the really important thing is that he didn't use traditional column or beam at all, but let the facade take over the work in a rather smart way. no one cares here that it looks like a tree, they are just thinking 'shit i don't have to use those fucking big columns and beams anymore?'. really the engineering is brilliant.
that tree thing by the way was not ito's brainwave but one of his staff, all of whom are given the chance to present their ideas during an in-house competition for the project. his own version was more traditional, but he could see the young gun's work was better and stepped aside (at least that is the anecdote from someone who works there). i love that sort of thing and it is part of why i admire him. more cool is that when that young feller leaves the office ito will support him with projects and introductions. def not the way it works back home in canada...
so...ito rocks.
and i like the crazy wobbly lava-lamp in a box thang. it absolutely stands out amongst the others.
apologies, the link was supposed to do
this ...
I agree the structure of Ito's work is great - that's what I was referring to about it be so different built.
ferd- no, I believe that if you do photoreal renderings you will more or less know what the space will really look like. Imho, this was one of the largest downfalls of the blob era - they never tested their forms and left the renderings to Maya's default plastic-like material.
If you do an accurate rendering (accurate sun, materials, camera, etc.) then you can come pretty damn close to what it will really look like. If someone wants to understand how a space will 'feel', there is no better way short of making the building.
It's all something too many architect's shy away from in favor of more abstract renderings (which I love, more so than any photoreal, but to 'test' the space you need reality).
i hate his tie!!!
i think his daughter dresses him.
but come on, at least he doesn't dress like this (not that it has anything to do with their architecture...)
ito's tie is pretty bad. the guy with the scarf/cravat look is entertaining
jump, i would say that theory in japan had a unique moment with metabolism using organic principles in urban theory: tokyo bay would be the culmination. This, of course, was untenable and failed in its manifestations. There's also an interesting article by Christopher Alexander's a CIty is not a Tree, 1965. http://www.rudi.net/bookshelf/classics/city/alexander/alexander1.shtml
there are some theorists like kakutani (who's theory is really opaque - is it the translation?), but my thought is japanese theory as an end-of-history, 19th C aesthetic theory is not considered important nor pursued as a discourse with european ideas. They don't make-up words like 'non-linear oceanic ear-balls' (that post is a goood read although hasselhof should be thankful then, that he isn't in MSAAD or AA) to carry their work.
what i like in Ito is his spirit of collaboration (with sasaki, ikeda, balmond) so that the emerging product is evolved. Haven't seen tod's; is it so structurally interesting? Is the eccentrically loaded frame made that much richer by thicker trunks reducing to thin branches (which looks rhetorical - the members wouldn't be so large)?
don't lie.... :]
sorry that's kojin karatani -
Anyhow
Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam, Holland
June, 1997
I repeat...I find Zaha's designs border line retarded.
The only building of hers that I like is the BMW plant.
Otherwise, her high in style, low in concept crap just isn't my cup of tea.
I hated Zaha's entry aswell .... it's really crap ...
surely there were better designs than that !!
zaha def wasn't at her best on this one.
snowi, interesting that you bring up metabolism as i am doing phd in the lab of one of its founders (maki fumihiko, whose chair/position is now filled by hidetoshi ohno, his chosen successor), so it comes up during discussions fairly often; especially with the foreign students.
chris alexander had it right (as far as i can tell, for the only time in his life) with that article which is really brilliant. but metabolism was never so accepted here anyway in the dogmatic way modernism was or new urbanism is in the usa. japanese theory isn't that confident (maki left the group early btw). and in studio Theory of that sort really never comes up. instead the students talk about program, or about how to make a clever form, and that is more than enough to be getting on with. i guess it is a kind of theory of the pragmatic.
on the other hand the thing that makes rem so interesting is that he has sort of come out of the other side of theory in the same way that mies went thorugh classicism, so it still tinges his work in interesting ways that aren't discussed. contrast that with ito, sejima, and al and we are stuck with interesting work that is in the end a one-liner. very very nice, but not much content in the end.
I think this works in japan because the culture here is about people inhabiting space rather than architecture defining it, but it leaves things a bit dry...even so the lack of justification for japanese architecture remains wonderfully fresh for me...
as far as the structure goes, man it is hard to descibe the frustration of dealing with buildings here where space is at a premium and the beams and columns have to be so damnedly large to take the earthquake forces through shear BIGNESS. That beam and column can be the skin (and the aesthetic) offers a glimmer of freedom, even if it is slightly overcooked.
Prada was maybe the first to do it well (and it IS better), but tods is quite alright. the interior btw sucks big time and was memorable only for its furniture (which has been covered up because the fabric was staining its users with purple dye).
not the same approach to structure as tod's but i like this one by ito a bit more...it is the mikimoto shop in ginza.
funny thing about alexander - he was the first to receive a phD from the arch department of harvard, and never burned so brightly afterwards..
interesting point about earthquake design - must be very constraining. is that why Ando's omotesando building looks like solid concrete? i prefer the aging boxes that were originally there compared to that juggernaut. as for the mikimoto (what is it with the high-end retailers-as-patrons in Japan?) check out the aborted schrager hotel by oma/hdem
well that link's no good:
http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4923&page=5
and look about 5 posts down. This, compounded with the failure of the whitney and lacma, sent rem running for the east.
I do agree about the sensibility of space in japan, and i wonder that they see things in detail or object, and less on spatial organization. I hate to generalize so broadly, but have never seen such beauty and attention on the finite, and less attention on large-scale relationships. Again, this is only in urban conditions in tokyo, kyoto (which is even worse - temples beside office towers), osaka
regarding ito's more continual searching for newness (compared to gehry in the post above), a number of you have assumed this taichung opera house comp. winner is the projecct in the recent a+u, but wasn;t that in fact a performance center in ghent belgium that happened to be this same exact spatial schema, with a curvy vs. boxy perimeter...that said I do think ito's work to be some of the most intriguing around -- aside from those silly spiralling surface/snail shell thingies in the a+u...
Ito makes you happy
i don't think ito's conceptual model is anything orginial..
he or his team def got idea from Dagmar Richter's works in non-standard architecture exhibition. i respect a lot of ito's other works though.
look at this image:
and you can also say that both projects got the idea from Erwin Hauer
http://www.newartsgallery.com/Artist_Ind/erwin/erwin.htm
not sure where it comes from. feels a bit like the 70's metabolist stuff to me. good chance that the engineer had a lot more to do with it than ito did...or maybe one of his younger staff...
snowi,
hah man i didn't realise it till you pointed it out but the ginza building is exactly the unrealised rem and stimpy building. ito did something similar with another building a few years ago, where the window as confetti thing was present but not the main theme, so i was thinking of it coming from there...
you are exactly right about small scale and large. all the attention is on getting the small stuff right and the urban scale is left to deal with itself haphazardly. personally i am happy for that to be the case. tokyo will never be a frozen disney-like city a la paris at least. it will never be as nice either, but i can live with that...;-)
ando's omotesando project (the long one that replaces a really nice old public housing project) unfortunately doesn't have the excuse of structural requirements for looking like a brick shithouse. it is just an example of plain old bad design.
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