987 - Domus

Domus 987

Drawing based on a design sketch by David Chipperfield for Fayland House.

Editorial: What a project is

Technology, standards and regulations are only a means and not an end. What matters is life, the one we manage to fulfil and the one we
would like to see fulfilled. Means, as such, do not spell happiness and are not sufficient in themselves. So how can we think of relying on
them to satisfy our needs, hopes and aspirations, our dreams?

The aesthetics of an incident

Pacific Sun, the most complex and ambitious animation ever made by this German artist, and currently on show at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, masterfully encapsulates his way of working and shows us the moving results of his most recent explorations.

Architecture education at the University of Tokyo

At the head of the new T_ADS laboratory created one year ago, Kuma outlines the specifics of his vision on architecture training, one that is in open contrast with the traditional Japanese approach, where the different design disciplines have always been separated.

Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki

The important Helsinki school unites in a single university centre a variety of different disciplines, ranging from architecture to design and from arts to crafts, offering students.

Four variations on housing

With an overview of the developments he built between 1995 and 2004, we commemorate the important work of João Álvaro Rocha in the field of social housing. To some degree, it is an exercise in tonal variations on the same theme, full of expressive and formal possibilities. As this architect once said of his projects, “Designing a house is always an adventure with an unexpected result”.

Smells like home

Inhabited places have long been the focus of Cantàfora’s work, explored and reworked in the infinite nuances of his canvases and lightly etched in his genteel stories. Paintings and writing tell the tales of lived-in houses, each one different, with its own smells and unique way of rendering its circumstance.

A new alliance between art and technology

Walter Benjamin’s theory on the mechanical reproducibility of the work of art forms a basis for Montani’s analysis of the weight that digital technology has in configuring the scenarios of our habitat. It is up to the interpreters of this architectural alliance to guide it toward giving us creative and surprising new possibilities.

New narration for design

Cinema has always constructed imagery by means of architecture, and now design too is speaking in pictures thanks to digital technology and new tools such as 3D projection mapping with augmented reality. As Roberto Rossellini said, the stories of manufacturers and products are “portraits”, but the broad audience they address transcends the family circle.

From Turin to Suzhou

After having taught for 30 years in Europe, from 2015 Pierre-Alain Croset will be directing the Department of Architecture at the Xi’an Jiatong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China. Here he presents critical reflection on his teaching, his design pedagogy, and the future of Italian schools seen in the light of a profession that is becoming highly international.

Designing surfaces

As the result of studying natural materials and elements, the design of the Spillo packaging paper produced by Fedrigoni aims at appreciation of the beauty of surfaces, thanks to a texture that optimises the play of light and shadow.

National Taichung Theater, Taiwan

The research on space and form conducted by the Japanese master Toyo Ito finds a stupendous application in the theatre complex of Taichung, where a thin concrete membrane artfully defines a hollow body to create a veritable “sound cave”.

New design scenarios

Essential to marketing strategies, design has become a resource with which to transform data from social observations into concise representations. The application of creativity allows design to propose things that do not yet exist in order to respond to new needs.

Administration Centre and Conference Hall, Troyes, France

A composition of spaces and relations between volumes new and old, the administration and congress complex of Troyes, France rebuilds a long damaged central area by seeking a proper ratio of scale for public areas, monumental parts, Gothic fabric and reinstated urban passages.

LeFrak Center at Lakeside, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York

The restoration of Lakeside and the addition of new public sports and recreation facilities afforded an opportunity for the architects to revive the former splendours of the famous 19-^th century park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in Brooklyn.

Fayland House, Buckinghamshire, Great Britain

The first move was the restoration of the site to its natural conditions, involving the removal of conflicting features that had been superimposed. Only then did Chipperfield erect this private bungalow, ensconced in the hills with robust brick columns.

A box of light, a play of views

The pavilion designed by the Sicilian architect with the collaboration of the artist Erich Demetz is an actual manifesto of the fundamental principles he uses in his architecture. By means of light, the cube becomes a place for rest and meditation on one hand, and for contemplation of the landscape on the other.

The ceremony of shopping

The lights and materials of the contemporary city transform the spaces of retail into a new metaphysical cityscape, the result of innovative interpretation by this Swedish designer who creates a tight bond between architecture and fashion.

Designing without thought

The Japanese designer Fukasawa tells Domus about the successive steps that led him to elaborate his “super-normal” work method. His predilection for interactive design, attention for the relationship between objects and the human body, and interdisciplinarity are central elements in his practice of the profession.

The water diviner and the hidden springs

The construction of an important waterworks on the slopes of Mount Pizzuto was an opportunity for Paladino to rehabilitate the flank damaged by excavation. His artistic proposal is a structure that reshapes the area with a textural coat of bright blue glass, marked by the mythic figure of a water-finder.

Rassegna: Kitchens

Feedback: John Tuomey’s Dublin

Elzeviro: Half-citizens

Is there a desire for architecture? Is it the fulfilment of human nature and the realisation of our “id in relation to whatever”? The history of the Bel Paese in the past half century is bad news. What about the future?

Current Issue: Domus 987

In this issue

Fayland House