people whose contribution to better performing buildings has not been fully appreciated
Last year’s 3rd Misfits Triennal featured many adaptive re-use projects, conversions and additions. The first week had the relaxed T-House Renovation by Fumiaso Architect and Associates, the repurposing of a former shop into House with a Small Library by Hiroshi Kinoshita and Associates, the elegant Renovation of Somekh Building by SHISUO design office, and the […]
As far as large Japanese architectural design companies go, NIkken Sekkei [日建設計] doesn’t have the history of Shimizu/Shimz Corporation that completed the Hotel for Foreigners in Tokyo in 1876 and that the company was chaired by a member of the Shimizu family from 1804 to 1966. This website shows some of the Shimz history and […]
Before everybody groans about another Pritzker Prize going to yet another Japanese architect, it might be worth wondering what factors might be responsible. Let’s begin by supposing the Pritzker Prize is shorthand for an architectural career of merit, or at least in the spotlight. The prize was inaugurated in 1979 and, as we know, its […]
This is an admission of an omission. For the three years I was at Kazuo Shinohara’s atelier at the then-called Tokyo Institute of Technology, I thought Kiyoshi Seike (清家 清) was running his own studio at the end of the corridor of the same floor of the same building. I used the Ōokayama gate to […]
I’ve missed out for not knowing more about Riken Yamamoto sooner. I’d always admired his 1977 Yamakawa Villa and never miss an opportunity to mention it, most recently in The Dispersed House. I recently borrowed a copy of the 2012 book Riken Yamamoto – it’s in English and Japanese and has the byline “A diary of […]
Since April 2017 there had been a draft post on Belgian architect Juliaan Lampens and, as I don’t follow online architectural media, only found out a week ago that he died last year – though knowing that at the time wouldn’t have changed anything. This post began as a career case study but it soon became […]
Every now and then, instead of taking my usual route to work, I’d head east on the E44 towards the oasis town of Hatta and hook up with the E611, the main inter-emirate freight-haulage route and exit at the Al Badi Interchange that’s now one fourth orbital. On Maliha Road and now going in the […]
Many of the photographs in this post are owned by Edward Denison, co-author of the book that prompted this post, and where I first learned about Luke Him Sau. Many of the other photographs are from the family archive. An architect like Luke Him Sau would have had to exist. He was born in Hong […]
Remember when architects communicated via buildings?
2019 is one hundred years since the idea of designing for machines and industrial production replaced designing for local traditions, local materials and local craftsmanship as the dominant paradigm of architecture. The circumstances of the past will probably never be replicated, let alone for all, but it's more important than ever to remember what has been lost.
Apart from everyone working in architectural media, architectural academia and architectural practice – and those that read Sunday newspaper arts & culture supplements – the sole practitioner is everyone’s image of the architect. It’s a person, usually male, working alone and freed from the commercial pressures and creative straightjackets of big business. We suspect this […]
Josef Frank July 15, 1885 – January 8, 1967 Josef Frank was there at the first CIAM and was invited by Mies van der Rohe to exhibit at the Weissenhof Exhibition in Stuttgart so, in 1927, he was up there with the best of them. A quick scan of the following quotes shows why he’s not […]
I remember this building from when it was published in Japan Architect in 1975. It was called something like House with 54 Windows. I didn’t remember the name of its architect, Kazuhiko Namba, or that it was a combined clinic and house but I did like its controlled craziness. Like many other buildings of the time, it […]
Kenji Hirose (広瀬 鎌二, 1922–2012) graduated in 1942 from Musashi Engineering School and, after the war ended, shifted to architecture in a few simple moves. 1945: Naval Facilities Engineering Division1946-51: Tokyo Mokko (Timber Structures)1949-51: Masachika Architects1952: Founded Kenji Hirose Architect & Associates1966: Professor at Musashi Technical College Department of Architecture He designed this house in 1949 […]
