The 3rd Misfits’ Triennial: WEEK 2
Ahh 2023–2024! AI overtook the metaverse as a thing to talk about. NEOM was still a thing. Architecture lived on. For this the second week of the triennial, I did as for the first and I began at the beginning of the period – which is June 2023 – and worked towards the present. At times, it felt like pages were being added “at the top” faster than I could work my way up process them “from below”. The rate at which new projects, information and somehow architecture-related content is added seems geared towards casual visitors spending maybe half an hour per day on the site daily and not for me visiting once every three years to view 300 pages (= approximately 2,400 projects) per year to have a think and write a paragraph or two about a dozen of them. This is all a bit sad. Knowing the projects are only there to hang some advertising off of is no consolation.
March 29, 2024: PLATO Contemporary Art Gallery / KWK PROMES
I haven’t thought of KWK PROMES for quite some time now but I remember them as having a knack for approaching a project sideways. This is, I think, a charming renovation to an already charming building. (I have a thing for buildings with twin round windows.) Removing parts of the building and then replacing them as doors isn’t an idea that is applicable to any situation. For a start, the existing building can’t be too precious. I keep using this word “charm”. I think by that I mean AI probably wasn’t involved in the “ideation” here. Because I’m writing this post from the bottom-up, most of my conclusions will be closer to the beginning of this post than then end, and I think this is one of them. Just as anything written by ChatGPT has an air of well-disguised vacuousness, I’m beginning to sense – no, not sense, see – the same thing happening with architecture. This is not one of those projects. It is not perfect. An entrance door does more than just represent whether a building is “open”, for example.
March 20, 2024: Office Nomura-Sanko / note architects
Japan. Translating that book of Riken Yamamoto’s affected me. This is an office building in a residential area. I don’t know what business Nomura-Sanko is in but this office of theirs has created a stir in the design world. It’s got the lot – a neighborhood presence, layered privacy, re-used timbers, inexpensive materials and thoughtful details. It seems to effortlessly be everything it was meant to be. Ryo Kumamatsu is doing some good work. https://note-arch.com
March 17, 2024: Bookstore in the Blast Furnace / hyperSity architects
China. I don’t think I’ll ever see a more perverse adaptive re-use. I’ve no idea what a bookstore is doing inside a former blast furnace but I’m glad this one is. What I find most amazing is that somebody had a business plan for a bookstore in a blast furnace and the numbers stacked up. This is no city centre location. Adaptive re-use is of course a good thing, and it’s especially welcome when highly-specialized structures such as this can be re-used. These structures obviously have a value over and above their value as legacy enclosures and I suspect it’s the novelty of the spaces produced. Perhaps we’re simply tired of purpose-designed space in its contrived enclosures? Perhaps we’re already beginning to tire of AI aesthetic?
These drawings are amazing.
February 3, 2024: Foshan OWSPACE and Community garden / 11ARCHITECTURE
A remodeling to include a bookstore and event space opening off the street, and a coffee shop on the upper level and also accessed by an outdoor seating area and outdoor event space. This small project does everything it can to divert passers-by into spending a bit of time browsing for a book and possibly reading it over a cup of coffee. In public.
I’ve been scrolling through these ArchDaily pages not mindlessly, but actively on the lookout for projects I think have something to offer our built environment. I’ve seen many cute and sometimes disturbing houses (more often than not from Japan) and, though I may have taken the time to understand them, I haven’t included them because most of them give little if anything back socially to the place where they are. In the case of Japan, there’s also the ethical question of whether we should really be paying that much attention to houses with a lifespan little more than that of a leather sofa. Even if I disregard houses in general, it seems that the majority of content is coming from Japan and China. If it’s a kindergarten, primary school, airport, or cultural facility, it is most likely to be a project in China. Curiously, Argentina seems as over-represented and the US and Europe under-represented. If I see a project in a European city, it is most likely to be in Vienna. Or sometimes Paris. If the Middle East, then it’s Dubai or somewhere in Saudi Arabia. I remember remarking on this three years ago. I wonder if my feed isn’t being tailored to my location in the same way the advertisements are? The projects here may over-represent Japan and China and this may not be completely my fault. That still doesn’t explain the four-month gap between the project above and the project below.
September 7, 2023: Nashan Geological Museum / Xiamen Urban Environment Design & Engineering
I’m not naturally drawn to associative architecture but I think this little museum of some very old things manages to hint at its contents whilst not upsetting its location. I wouldn’t like it as much if it were a house by Frank Lloyd Wright, Paolo Soleri or Antoine Predock. It’s very picturesque and having no distinct scale makes it very monumental. The simple geometry makes me wonder what all the fuss about complex curves is about. Sometimes a circle or two is all you need. Its regard for context shows a disregard for the zeitgeist. This is admirable and appropriate. My pick so far.
August 29, 2023: Gensler and Moody Nolan Reveal Ohio’s New Airport Terminal
“As the fastest-growing metropolitan city in the Midwest region, Columbus is situated amidst Central Ohio’s exciting blend of infrastructure and natural landscape.”
August 13, 2023: Factory Apartments / Elephant
I remember somebody [V was it you?] sent me a link to this project, thinking I might find a factory-to-apartments conversion interesting and it is, but not in a good way. I wonder what kind of factory it was? The new facade can’t have been cheap and makes me suspect it’s to add a touch of glam to a location lacking gentrification. The building depth looks about 40m and, as the layouts reveal, resist packaging into apartment-size areas with each habitable room having a window. One third of the L-shaped apartment below has no natural illumination. At least the windows are openable and may force some air through this third, although probably not the bathroom. If this was a factory, then the four corner stairs and elevators must have been existing as they’re not in very convenient positions for residential. Sure it’s fine to criticize but what would I have done? Hm. Instead of the central corridor I’d first try deck access linking the fire escape stairs top and bottom, and then divide the floor plate into narrow two-storey apartments (like Jean Nouvel did with Nemausus at Nimes). It doesn’t look like making large openings in the slabs was an option (post tensioning?) The deck access could be made more social with overlooked by kitchens next to a bathroom and set-back behind a “front yard” (like Kikutake did at Pasadena Heights) but the apartments would still be deep. Otherwise, you get long and narrow Japanese-style studio apartments. My next try would be for an open H-shape corridor (maybe one structural bay wide and deep?) linking the corner access top and bottom, and across the middle. There’d be about the same number of apartments but with cross ventilation and if kitchens are at the access end, the potential for more social access. It might be an idea to give each unit a 2m deep balcony and leave it up to the residents whether to enclose it or not.
July 31, 2023: Long House with an Engawa Senior Daycare Center / Yamazaki Kentaro Design Workshop
The most important part of the plans is nearly illegible but this actually does seem to be a house that incorporates a senior day-care centre. It’s the first I’ve heard of anything like it. Timbers are bolted together with none of that complicated Japanese joinery. For all that, the project looks like it could be in Australia, except for the philosophy of forming connections between the elderly, the disabled, children, and neighbors. Local residents helped with the landscaping. The client says it feels like this architecture is a reminder of something important that modern Japan has lost. Riken Yamamoto would agree.
July 18, 2023: Warehouse Villa in Isumi / Arii Irie Architects
Another way to get around my ban on houses is to call it a warehouse. Already, there seems to be a theme to this second week. This is a very stylish shed indeed, and because the things we have don’t tend to be made of construction materials, a contrast between enclosure and enclosed occurs naturally. This ware/house is in Isumi on the other side of the other side of Tokyo Bay. I suspect that wood stove isn’t going to make the place that warm in winter. Would this house have happened without Lacaton & Vassal’s Lapatie House? Probably, given Japan’s acceptance of sheds as architecture.
July 7, 2023: Vasse House / Joshua Duncan Architect
We all admire the Australian house when it’s a weekend house/airb’n’b in picturesque countryside but what should an Australian house be when it’s in a smallish country town and a typical plot in its suburbs at that? This is one answer. The lawn and the double garage are to be expected, and perhaps so is the front garden of native plants but the house’s openness to the lawn is atypical, perhaps because of the size of the plot. The house’s interior is also open compared to the warrens of rooms in housebuilder offerings. This house seems to offer a lot in comparison, and it’s be interesting to know how the cost/m2 compares.
June 26, 2023: House for Gonda / Office for Environment Architecture
This is a private house and it looks like an extension and a renovation combined. What I notice is a care for materials and construction but not for conventional aesthetics, even by Japanese standards. The new-build (?) shed above the existing is not something forced in terms of site area but it allows the four distinct parts of this house to be more compactly linked. If it looks unconventional to us and probably to many Japanese as well, I suspect it’s because it is not the cheapest solution when there is empty land available. What is very Japanese is the “outdoor shoes” area of the kitchen and the almost ceremonial procession to get to the (very Western) bath. Design by conscious collage is something we don’t see too much of. Perhaps we should.
June 20, 2023: Public Toilet in Shenzhen Bay Haifeng Sports Square / CCDI GROUP 21 Design Studio
We saw much design with Tokyo Toilet but this public toilet is not so much about the design as such, but about the grandness of the public gesture. It’s high-capacity as well, with twice as many stalls as you’d see in the luggage retrieval area at a large airport.
June 20, 2023: AQO Office / HYBE Design Team + TEKI Design
Unlike the first project in WEEK 1 (T House Renovation / FUMIASO ARCHITECT & ASSOCIATES) where the traditional building and the new insertions were treated exactly the same way and given the same amount of importance, with this project the interior is inserted into what is basically a shed but treated with the same amount of reverence as a traditional building. In this case, the enclosure couldn’t be more utilitarian and the contents any less tactile. There’s very little in the way of objects mediating between people and enclosure. The office desk lighting is unobtrusive. The office desk section doesn’t touch the walls. The floor is concrete because it’s meant to be walked on with shoes on. To me this is a very clear project because of the distinction between the enclosure and the need for that enclosure to be used by people.
In this WEEK 2, I found myself becoming quicker at scrolling past anything by Foster + Partners, Heatherwick Studio, BIG and MVRDV. Stefano Boeri and Carlo Ratti are becoming fairly ubiquitous as well. In a week or two, I’ll bring you WEEK 3 of The 3rd Misfits’ Triennale. As of today, it looks like it’ll be a summary of 275 pages of ArchDaily although I daresay there’ll be a few more added by the time I arrive at June 15, 2025. I say “it’ll be a “summary” but really just some projects that appeal to me for some reason – hopefully because I see in them something we could do with some more of. Of this lot, there’s only one maybe two I wish I’d learned of earlier and will someday go out of my way to visit.
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Revisited this week:
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