Archinect - News

Makoto Yamaguchi completes Tokyo gaming headquarters with slanting walls and video game metaphors

2024-04-17T11:43:00-04:00

Japanese practice Makoto Yamaguchi Design has completed a headquarters for a game production company in Tokyo inspired by video game elements.

Facing the site of an elevated railway where trains pass on average every 1.5 minutes in both directions, the scheme is defined by slanted walls in response to environmental elements such as light, wind, and sound.

Image credit: Koichi Torimura

Across the building, every slanted wall height is optimized according to the requirements of each floor. The third-floor walls, for example, are increased in height to prevent recording studios from being impacted by external noise. Meanwhile, the height of the slanted walls decreases as the scheme rises to open views of the surrounding city.

Image credit: Koichi Torimura

“The slanted walls protect the interior from the external gaze, making it impossible to tell what the building is for from the outside,” Yamaguchi explains. “Not being able to see the purpose is much the sa...

Seven defining projects by the 2024 Pritzker Prize winner Riken Yamamoto

2024-03-05T17:40:00-05:00

This morning’s announcement of Riken Yamamoto as the 53rd official laureate of the Pritzker Prize has come with praise for the Beijing-born Japanese designer whose community-minded approach to architecture has impacted countless lives. Many outside of Asia were surprised by his selection, which is being received as a win for rational design principles, relational aesthetics, and the democratization of architecture.

He is particularly well-known for placing emphasis on the boundaries and periphery spaces inherent in his designs, as well as for having an equal competency in transfusing landscapes within their natural environments and urban context. To date, completed works include projects in Japan, Switzerland, China, and the Republic of Korea.

“Yamamoto has expanded the toolbox of the profession towards both the past and the future to be able to give each time, in very different modes and at very different scales, the most pertinent response to the challenges of both the built envi...

Toyo Ito donates early-career archive to the Canadian Centre for Architecture

2023-12-06T17:21:00-05:00

The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) has just announced its acquisition of architect Toyo Ito’s early-career archive.

The trove entails drawings, models, and sketches related to his practice Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects (founded as Urban Robot) from 1971 until 1989. The CCA says the donation will help researchers establish a better through line from the 2013 Pritzker Prize winner's early-career work in dialogue with its other archival holdings. The decision was made in September after 82-year-old Ito apparently determined he could not find an “appropriate place” in his home country in which to store the collection, according to The Yomiuri Shimbun.

In a press announcement, Ito said: “The CCA is an architectural museum and research center I have the utmost trust in. Upon this donation, I received requests from many Japanese architects and researchers, asking if it is possible to keep those archives in Japan. However, I have the confidence that CCA offers unparalleled ac...

Legendary Japanese architect Arata Isozaki has passed away aged 91

2022-12-29T19:41:00-05:00

Arata Isozaki is dead. The famed designer of many of post-war Japan’s most significant public buildings and cultural commissions and winner of the 2019 Pritzker Prize passed away peacefully on Wednesday at his home in Okinawa, according to the New York Times.

Born in Ōita Prefecture in 1931, Isozaki studied at the University of Tokyo before working in the office of Kenzo Tange and then setting out to form his own practice in 1963. He was among a generation of Japanese star architects and designers, including contemporaries Issey Miyake, Shiro Kuramata, and Kisho Kurokawa, that indelibly changed the way the country was perceived and spoke to the world, authoring the designs for several key structures rendered in his ever-changing and aberrant interpretation of the metabolic style.

Isozaki's 1990 Art Tower Mito. Photo courtesy of Yasuhiro Ishimoto

“The most important thing an artist can do is confront society with something it has never seen before, something in a sense improper,” Iso...

Tadao Ando to receive the Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award

2022-09-06T08:00:00-04:00

Prolific, self-taught, and Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando has been announced today as the recipient of the Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement award. The recognition is presented by the Créateurs Design Awards, a program that highlights extraordinary work in architecture, interior design, product design, photography, journalism, and curation.

Previously on Archinect: New photos of Tadao Ando's Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection makeover. (Image courtesy Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection. © Tadao Ando Architect & Associates, NeM / Niney et Marca Architectes, Agence Pierre-Antoine Gatier. Photo by Patrick Tourneboeuf. Artist: Urs Fischer.)

“France has a cultural legacy of pursuing ideas beyond the boundary of an era. Revolutionary projects such as the Eiffel Tower and the Centre Pompidou came to fruition in Paris, redefining the city’s historical context,” Ando said in response to winning the award. “Coresidence of the genius loci, the essence of a pl...

Japanese design team create 'Cat Tower Mansion'

2020-07-14T11:40:00-04:00

The initial idea of residential construction firm Mitsubishi Estate Residence, the Cat Tower Mansion was realized by a team led by Japanese-based architect Akiko Ishimaru, who also happens to be a cat-lover. The multi-story structure is designed to exist within the interior of a home. The "ground floor" contains the bathroom, fit with a litter box for the cat, and every other level holds its own purpose. The second floor is a garden lounge; the third is the living room; and the top level is a soft sleeping space.

Nendo-designed 'Stairway House' offers connected living for three generations

2020-04-06T12:15:00-04:00

Japanese-based firm Nendo has completed a novel three-story two-family home in Tokyo. With three generations of the same family sharing the space, the living quarters for the older couple is situated on the 1st floor, while the 2nd and 3rd levels house the younger couple and their child.

Spanning from the front yard ground level to the peak of the third floor is an expansive "stairway-like" structure that penetrates through the building. Offering separation with a degree of preserved connectedness.

Inside the stairway are usable spaces such as bathrooms and an actual usable staircase. Concrete was used for the exterior steps while steel makes up the interior steps.

The south elevation, which contains the protruding stairway, offers full-height glazing, allowing natural daylight into the home while further solidifying the continuous effect of the extruded steps.

This wooden house in Japan stretches 50 meters long

2020-01-27T11:57:00-05:00

Overlooking vast rice fields, scattered farmhouses, and mountains, sits a quaint wooden residence designed by Japan-based Motoki Ishikawa Architect & Associates Inc.. Located in Yokote, Japan, the design challenge came in addressing the area's dynamic climate where long winters invite heavy snowfall and short summers bring high humidity.

Working within a strict budget, the architects decided to construct the home in a linear fashion, dividing up the space based on the owner's programmatic needs. The garage, sunroom, and main residence, all occupy a space of the same width. Each area of the home is divided by a sunroom, allowing connectivity to the exterior and a buffer between living spaces.

Moreover, while considering the feasibility of construction, the design team composed the home’s columns and beams in identical dimensions with a goal of streamlining its production.

Significant works of 2019 Pritzker Prize laureate Arata Isozaki

2019-03-05T13:38:00-05:00

Arata Isozaki was just awarded the 2019 Pritzker Prize at the age of 87. Isozaki once famously said that "the most important thing an artist can do is confront society with something it has never seen before, something in a sense improper." As a full life of work lies behind the Japanese architect, we can witness the shifts and patterns of his multi-decade career as it has been committed to the level of unfamiliarity and newness that Isozaki has long sought to imbue in his work.

1. Ōita Prefectural Library, Ōita, Japan, 1962-66

Ōita Prefectural Library, photo courtesy of Yasuhiro Ishimot

As a young architect, Isozaki was influenced by the then-popular style of Brutalist architecture, and he applied it when given the opportunity to design the library in his hometown of Ōita on the island of Kyushu. Far away from Tokyo, he did not consider himself a member of the Metabolist movement due to its utilitarian motives.

2. Tsukuba Center Building, Ibaraki, Japan, 1979-83

Tsukaba Center Buil...

Japanese architect Junya Ishigami announces plans for design of 2019 Serpentine pavilion

2019-02-14T13:40:00-05:00

Japanese architect Junya Ishigami, known for his experimental works that blend nature and fantasy, has been tapped by the Serpentine Gallery to design their popular summer attraction, the Serpentine Pavilion. The highly sought-after commission follows the success of previous iterations by rising stars in the world of architecture, Frida Escobedo (2018) and Diébédo Francis Kéré (2017).

Junya Ishigami, KAIT Workshop, Kanagawa Institute of Technology, Japan, 2008 © Junya Ishigami + Associates

At 44, Ishigami, who worked at SANAA before starting his own practice, has amassed a unique body of work. In 2010, he was awarded the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale for his installation “Architecture as Air," praised by the jury for pushing the "limits of materiality, visibility, tectonics, thinness, and ultimately of architecture itself.” Described by Oliver Wainwright as a magician of materials, Ishigami's gift for creating unfeasibly light structures is obvious in o...

Dissolving architecture's binaries: Suppose Design Office

2018-09-18T14:25:00-04:00

Architecture, after all, dictates behavior: Public or private, indoor or outdoor, extravagant or humble, old or new, fake or real — these are a few of the obvious binaries by which we assess the spaces we inhabit. They are also the edges against which most architects hone their signature styles. [...] Tanijiri and Yoshida have instead devoted themselves to the liminal place where these elements break down; their designs [...] unite concepts that seem opposed.

Office in Imabari, Ehime, Japan, 2013, Suppose Design Office. Image via suppose.jp.

The NYT Style Magazine showcases the fascinating work of Japanese architects Suppose Design Office and their ongoing minimalist exploration of fluidity, porosity, and (in)completeness. "No matter how closely the architects listen to clients’ desires and plans to use the space," T Magazine editor Kurt Soller writes, "working with such a firm ultimately requires that the inhabitants leave much of that behind. Even its name, Suppose, dares them to question their own assumptions."

Blue Blanc, Aichi, Japan, 2011, Suppose Design Office. Image via suppose.jp.

PLANE—SITE visits Kengo Kuma's Tokyo offices in new Time-Space-Existence video

2017-12-12T13:44:00-05:00

Kengo Kuma is one of Japan’s most significant living architects, thanks to his sophisticated integrations of traditional architecture with up-to-the-minute technologies. Unusually sensitive to materiality and technique, Kuma’s designs are irresistibly tactile, often resembling hand-woven fabrics or an ornate beehive. As part of our partnership with PLANE—SITE (a Berlin-based creative agency working at the interface of urban form, cultural space and social life), we are sharing another video from their Time-Space-Existence series featuring the prominent Japanese architect discussing his work.

SunnyHills © DAICI ANO

In this new short video, PLANE—SITE travels to the Tokyo offices of Kengo Kuma & Associates to discuss the topics of time, space, and existence as they relate to his work. Widely regarded as one of Japan’s most eminent architects, Kuma's most significant buildings include Stone Museum in Nasu, which repurposed stone from old rice stores, the Nagasaki Prefectural Museum and...

Japan's Magical Mountainside

2017-04-02T14:44:00-04:00

There is Makoto Yamaguchi’s Polygon House, a quasi-Brutalist geode of distressed steel and glass that perches on a hill in a forest like an abandoned space pod; the concrete, glass and larch wood Omizubata N House by Iida Archiship Studio, as well as TNA’s Passage, Ring and Stage House(s)

Hanya Yanagihara visited the mountain town of Karuizawa, which has a collection of houses designed by prominent Japanese architects.

Architect Sou Fujimoto’s Futuristic Spaces

2014-11-06T18:57:00-05:00

Fujimoto’s goal isn’t just to make spaces—the basic function of architecture—but to make people relate to spaces in new ways. Watching the couple move around the house, approaching everyday activities with the finesse the unusual design requires, suggests he is well on his way to achieving it.

The Japanese designer’s “future primitive” structures harmonize nature and built environments, offering radical new versions of walls, ceilings and floors.

Atelier Bow-Wow: Micro Public Space

2014-02-06T00:28:00-05:00

What is “micro public space”?...To date, Atelier Bow-Wow have presented, in exhibition settings, numerous installations featuring small structures, furniture and so on...More than just small buildings, these works are devices supporting the interaction and activities of all sorts of people, and while compact in size, create places open to a diverse audience".

Starting February 15 and running through May 6, 2014, a new exhibition grants a close look at the practice of Atelier Bow-Wow. The exhibit will explore various approaches to public spaces – via a combination of numerous “micro-public-space” works actually able to be experienced at the museum and case studies of Atelier Bow-Wow works. In addition to a selection of Atelier Bow-Wow's leading works to date, this exhibition will feature a new piece created specifically for Hiroshima.

Interview with CASE-REAL, architects of "Restaurant on the Sea"

2013-11-13T17:54:00-05:00

Recently featured as part of our ShowCase series, "Restaurant on the Sea" by CASE-REAL is an elegant restaurant located smack on the coastline of Teshima, a tiny island in Japan's Seto Inland Sea. Opening for the Setouchi Triennale, the restaurant continues to serve local Japanese fare to the island's 1,000 inhabitants, after the art-seeking tourists' exodus.

The modest project description left us wanting more, so we asked CASE-REAL to comment on a few of the restaurant's details.

Archinect: What kind of food will the restaurant serve?

CASE-REAL (Ritsu Shibata): You can eat Japanese food in this restaurant, using the local ingredients including seafood from Setouchi Ocean. The restaurant serves a lunch menu, along with a prix fixe dinner menu (only with reservation).

Archinect: What was the inspiration behind the public kitchen?

CASE-REAL: The idea of the "public kitchen" was originally requested by the owner, Ms. Mitsuko Fukutake, who is also a councilor of Fuku...

Toyo Ito announced as recipient for 2013 Pritzker Prize

2013-03-17T16:09:00-04:00

For nearly 40 years, Toyo Ito has pursued excellence. His work has not remained static and has never been predictable. He has been an inspiration and influenced the thinking of younger generations of architects both within his land and abroad.

Contrary to the popular choice of Steven Holl, in this year's Pritzker Bets thread in the Archinect forum, Toyo Ito takes the prestigious award. Credit goes to members jk3hl, miesian and helenakeys for their insightful predictions (or hopes, to be more accurate).

Steven Ward says, "Yep, there's def a grudge against Holl..."

There's no denying, however, that Toyo Ito is deserving of the Pritzker. Perhaps Holl's year is next.

Tower of Winds, 1986, Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa, Japan
Photo by Tomio Ohashi

The 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize Ceremony Will Be Held in Boston at the John F. Kennedy Library.

Some comments from this year's jurors:

Toyo Ito, his manner, methodology, and generosity of mind and spirit to the younger generation of architects; as well as the brilliance of the constant innovation and execution of his work throughout his long and distinguished career, are qualities that those younger architects would do well to study. Toyo Ito is, quite simply, a ma...

U-40 Japanese Architects

2011-11-26T11:45:44-05:00

This movies try to give just a few glance of this specific generation of japanese architects. Under40japaneseachitects.com could be the start of a ambious project , focus on architecture communication by video's documentary support, in the wish to still create better connection between japan and foreign countries in architectural and design field.

Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa dies at 73

2007-10-12T13:45:00-04:00

Internationally acclaimed Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa, known for designs that merge traditional architecture styles and philosophy, died Friday, a Tokyo hospital spokeswoman said. He was 73. IHT