The 3rd Misfits’ Triennale: WEEK 1
June 2022 – June 2023
Here we go again! As ever, I’ll be going through the past three years’ worth of ArchDaily and selecting projects that made me stop scrolling for a minute or two. Along the way were some buildings I couldn’t unsee, a frightening amount of buildings I felt sadly indifferent to, and the occasional piece of news I missed because I didn’t compulsively visit daily through fear of missing out. This is the third time I’ve done this and there are only very few projects I wish I’d found out about earlier, and even fewer that I wish there were more of. This culture of consuming images rather than ideas for how to make buildings better isn’t a healthy one. I expect these last three years will have much breathless reporting on AI and architecture and I’l save a bunch of links to mull over this in some future post. The period June 2022 – June 2023 will cover ArchDaily pages 570 – 900. There’s approximately 330 pages per year and so 20 projects tier or take per page so each day brings you at least three projects to mull over. [Header image: Daisen Work Hut by Niimori Jamison Architects.
July 14, 2022: T House Renovation / FUMIASO ARCHITECT & ASSOCIATES
This is a cheeky renovation and a bit of a progression from the over-reverential ones we’ve seen a lot of 2022-2025. There’s some strange things happening but it doesn’t seem too self-conscious like many of the typology. All elements seem equal and no special emphasis given to the historical or the new or contrasting them both. That’s where I see the importance of what’s essentially a house but contains a nail salon for some reason.
August 6, 2022: The Okura Tokyo / Taniguchi and Associates + TAISEI DESIGN Planners Architects & Engineers
So Tokyo’s Okura Hotel by Yoshiro Taniguchi (1904-1979) was rebuilt by his son, Yoshio Taniguchi (1937-2024). It’s not too often something like that happens. Apparently, the lobby in the new “Heritage Wing” is a reconstruction of the much-admired former lobby, down to the illumination and the acoustics. Never having stayed there, I won’t be able to tell but the photographs are convincing. I wish such reconstructions happened more often. Isé Shrine is one precent for rebuilding the same thing at huge cost for some reason. There’s also The Old Imperial Bar at FLW’s Imperial Hotel but I’m not sure if it ever existed as such, or was just cobbled together from some rather nice bits of salvage.
August 9, 2022: Gluon Preserves the Now-Dismantled Nakagin Capsule Tower Building in the Metaverse
Since I started putting together this post (starting from June 2023 at the end, and working back), I’ve been wondering why ArchDaily is so fixated on the metaverse as if they were trying to will it into existence? To think a virtual representation is a substitute for a representation of the real thing is taking post modernism to the next level. I trying to think in what sense anything has been “preserved”. Is it really preservation if a virtual us can virtually move around a virtual space? I’m not sure why I would want to do that. I’m not even sure what educational value it would have. The trouble with the metaverse is that we’re still trying to find a use for it.
September 7, 2022: “This House Does Not Exist” Uses AI to Generate Images Inspired by ArchDaily’s Modern Architecture Projects
At last, an AI image generator that uses images from ArchDaily to generate new images of imaginary buildings that, going by the image below, are then fed back into ArchDaily! This can’t end well. On the other hand, going by what I’ve seen so far of the 2022-2023 offerings, it’s pretty much what’s happening anyway. If this takes off – and who’s to know it isn’t happening already? – ArchDaily will no longer need actual contributors. If readers don’t realize or care about the difference, then the business model is safe.
September 19, 2022: House & Restaurant / junya ishigami + associates
I saw an image of a model some years ago and had forgotten it until I saw this. I think I understand the sequence of construction, but the construction drawings show a foundation of gravel, insulation and concrete layers beneath both the extracted earth and the poured concrete so maybe I don’t.
The building contains a restaurant and a house but that’s almost incidental to the produced spaces that are unique – at least for an artificially constructed object. Even now I’m unsure if this construction method is something genuinely innovative or just a new way of making blobtecture. Very fixed glazing somehow fitted afterwards, tells us it aspires to be a natural object and this is at some cost to ventilation. All ventilation is mechanical. I see many candles to avoid chasings for lighting fixtures. There’s a free-standing exhaust above the induction cooker, and some other ventilation device next to the bed but these are all meant to be not seen.
To me there’s a contradiction between the naturalness of the shape, the unnaturalness of its sealing, and the contrivedness of its ventilation and drainage. A disdain for ventilation doesn’t automatically make it great architecture, or even something that had to be tried once at least. I think my biggest problem is with how it looks. Below street level, it probably is how it was imagined to be and certainly how I remember the model. It’s obvious that much thought and skill has been spent to keep the flat roof unblemished but for whose sake? It’s not doing much for the community socially or visually. Since what we’re seeing isn’t the earth that was taken away but what was left stuck to the inside of a very huge concrete pour, the building would be no less “natural” if the concrete had been poured into a mold of a compacted layer of earth above ground. True, what we are seeing is a kind of negative space (since it was made from a mold) but it’s really a big hole excavated in two stages – the first to make the mold and the second to remove the mold once the concrete has hardened. Making earthen-like buildings out of concrete can’t be a good idea.
October 10, 2022: House without Walls / Chaoffice
This is an interesting one. Most home offices manage to insert an office space into a regular domestic layout but this one makes the meeting and work table the hub of the space while the domestic functions are in the background. The bed is tucked away behind the archive. There’s no living area so the occupants are either at their desk or in bed. They’re architects, obviously.
October 28, 2022: 425 Park Avenue / Foster + Partners
I just checked up and it was 2012 when Norman Foster was captured on video presenting his firm’s proposal for this building. Other presenters included Rem Koolhaas and Patrik Schumacher. [c.f. Celebrity Shoot-Out] I’m sure NF made liberal use of the term “sky gardens” to justify the crazy idea of offsetting the structural grid not once but twice. Still, it must have made sense to someone because, ten years on, the thing was built. F+P had a good 2022 with various airports across China and dotted over the Middle East.
November 21, 2022: Apartment S / Tsukagoshi Miyashita Sekkei
This project is for two apartments and a half-basement studio. It’s fascinating because the site is so horrible but a lot has been done with it. The upper windows provide long views up and down the street rather than into the windows opposite. That angled ceiling/floor complicates the middle level but makes the basement studio a more pleasant place to be. I wouldn’t have included this if it was a one-house-per-family house.
November 22, 2022: “I Followed My Father’s Advice and Did Not Design a House for My Family” in Conversation With Paul Tange
This was an interesting read and, to be honest, the first I knew that Kenzo Tange had a son, born 1958, who graduated from Harvard and joined his father’s practice, eventually becoming its chairman and design principal. His first independent work was the 2008 Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower when he was 50, his father having died three years earlier. It makes me wonder about his claim to adhere to his father’s design principles.
December 11, 2022: Bloom Liutan Market / MINAX Architects
A covered market for fresh food must be one of the oldest types of public architecture. Apart from this one being three storeys, they can’t have changed much. This one’s in Wuxi, China. It looks like a lot of people still cook. It’s a shame there weren’t any photographs of the fish counter. Eggs counters in Chinese markets are also amazing.
December 19, 2022: House with a Small Library / Hiroshi Kinoshita and Associates
Here’s something you don’t see many of – a house with what looks like a library open to the public. It’s a good thing to do if you have too many books you don’t want to throw or give away. I wonder what books they are? Upstairs is one of those “only in Japan” residences.
December 25, 2022: House Tjurpannan / HelgessonGonzaga Arkitekter
This Triennale I’m going to mostly ignore private houses, especially detached ones on picturesque sites but I include this one because its simplicity reminds me of the golden age of Scandinavian architecture, although I expect it’s not so inexpensive to make these days. Still, it’s a good reminder of what might be possible with inexpensive materials that aren’t wood.
January 5, 2023: Co-build Roof Garden “Green Cloud Garden” / 11architecture
A little project in Shenzen, consisting of a kit of parts that can easily be implemented on other buildings, as the large photograph hints at.
March 3, 2023: 450 Warren / SO-IL
I hadn’t thought of So-IL for a while so I was pleased to see they’re doing good work that’s better than anyone expects in this sector of the US apartment market. By that I mean they’re trying to make the most of less expensive materials yet providing an environment residents can live in with dignity. They try to provide all bathrooms with a window, and to overlook circulation space from inside the units, and from kitchens if possible. This is good.
March 23, 2023: Renovation of Somekh Building / SHISUO design office
April ’23 was a dead zone. If I choose to ignore detached houses, it looks like there’s not going to be much left to talk about. Perhaps it’s a case of only small-scale projects going ahead over the 2020-2022 Covid years. This project is a renovation into a hotel, much like the style of Neri & Hu’s The Waterehouse [c.f. Another Level]. This isn’t a simple case of stripping out and refurbishing what’s left, but neither is it a case of using the base building for some dubious architectural grandstanding such as the last example in this post. There was always the danger that simple repair would morph into a style (to be then replaced in turn by the next fad) but this renovation seems relatively static in that sense. I’ve never passed by the Somekh building in Shanghai but I intend to check it out, especially as it’s a hotel.
May 7, 2023: Social Housing 1737 / HARQUITECTES
Harquitectes have done something special here. It’s low-cost housing, obviously. They’ve used standardized units to create standardized plans for 1- and 2-bedroom apartments. The living spaces are the same dimensions and all bathrooms and entrances are treated the same way. The inside corridor is treated as a winter garden facing another one across three meters. These plans are both generous and tight at the same time, Structure, construction, layout, access and services all had to be solved simultaneously. Impressive.
May 8, 2023: Bruz Utopia Housing / Champenois Architectes
I’ve seen perimeter blocks with courtyards but this one is sheltered with rooftop garden “sheds” for people on the uppermost level. What’s I like about this is how the living spaces overlook the atrium space even if it’s a shame the kitchens are placed in the middle (next to the bathrooms). Dual aspect apartments around an atrium necessarily involve problems of the feeling of privacy and security and these have ben dealt with very skilfully here.
May 30, 2023: EZU House and Café / Yabashi architects & associates
I’ve decided to be actively prejudiced against single family detached houses but am including this one because it’s an example of a house above a shop – a café and as such an example of what Riken Yamamoto is saying our cities should have more of. In this case, the upper level looks like it could be used as an upwards extension of the café space where it looks like the household cooking is done anyway, or as a downwards extension of the living space, or perhaps as both, even if not at the same time. It looks like the Western predilection is for housing to provide privacy and security as a bare minimum, isn’t as strong in Japan. This is an encouraging project. As Yamamoto says, for there to be any sense of community, residents must be able to be seen and heard.
June 7, 2023: tutiru Café / FATHOM
I’m just including this to show how unadorned materials are still being used in Japan in ways that are obviously inexpensive yet stylish. This building is a shameless shed. It has many examples of what we would term “industrial” yet it doesn’t have rubber flooring or glass blocks. It’s too inexpensive and low-key. It seems like the Japanese definition of “natural” materials isn’t limited to the organic. They might be onto something.
June 14, 2023: Traditional House of the Future / Lidia Ratoi + John Lin
I’m not sure what to think of this. A house made of salvaged timbers and various traditional construction materials is constructed within 3D printed ground floor walls but it’s not clear why. There’s much photogenic juxtaposition of old and new(-ish) as well as the irregularity that seems to be in vogue but we’ll have to see how well it ages both physically and aesthetically before we make claims about it being the future of traditional houses. The 64 photographs and the traditionally dressed types either sitting around or doing the construction make me wonder what the intent really was.
June 16, 2023: Pachtwoning House / jo taillieu architecten
And then we have this remade villa by jo tallieu architecten. It shows that the ostensibly noble intention of making a dilapidated house newly liveable doesn’t mean it has to be done with respect and an absence of pretense. jta have have done some good work in the past but there was always the fear they would do something like this.
This takes us up to mid-June 2023. I’m glad I didn’t stop to look at single-family houses, although the temptation was great. They’ve always been traditionally justified on the grounds of testing ideas and nurturing new talent but all that happens is the houses and the practices simply get larger until they offered a small cultural facility, and then a bigger one. In scanning 2022-2023 I’ve seen the large commercial practices such as ZHA, BIG, OMA, MVRDV, HdM, F+P etc. compete for the same projects around the world, occasionally with Atkins and AEDAS and increasingly, MAD. I expected to see more masterplanning but “historic-petroleum-refinery-conversion-into-sustainable-culture-ecopark” – or variations on it – was big. I saw many detached houses and I saw the care that had gone into the design of many of them. I hope there are many sole practitioners around the world who are doing the same in their local communities but just don’t feel the need to publicize it on a global platform. Based in Hiroshima, FATHOM are getting a reputation for doing good small commercial renovations. https://www.archdaily.com/office/fathom There’s an enthusiasm I don’t see in much of the larger practices and their charmless output.
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